In a recent study, researchers explored the impact of playing real-time strategy (RTS) video games on brain connectivity. They found that extensive gameplay, specifically in the RTS games StarCraft II, is associated with significant differences in the brain’s structural and functional connectivity. The findings have been published in the journal NeuroImage.
Video games have become a central part of modern culture, influencing various fields such as education, medicine, and professional eSports. RTS games, which require players to manage resources, build bases, and engage in strategic combat, provide a rich environment for studying brain plasticity.
Previous research has shown that such games can lead to structural changes in the brain, but the mechanisms behind these changes and their functional implications remain unclear. The new study aimed to bridge this gap by using advanced brain modeling techniques to explore how video game expertise affects brain connectivity and cognitive functions.
“Our main interest was to study how expertise can shape the way the brain is wired, from plasticity mechanisms. This is not exclusively from video games, but also from music, dance, and almost any other discipline,” said study author Carlos Coronel, a postdoctoral researcher at the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) in Chile.
“Why video games? One way to stimulate neuroplasticity is to play video games,” explained co-author Natalia Kowalczyk-Grębska, a postdoctoral researcher at SWPS University. “In games, the level of involvement is adjusted to the level of tasks performed – when we win, we move to a higher level and we have to learn new competences.”
“This is how new challenges are created and motivate players to develop the necessary skills (and, at the same time our brain) to achieve the goal, i.e. winning the game. At the same time, due to their attractiveness, games they maintain a high level of users motivation – you can play for hours and not get bored.”
The study involved 62 right-handed male participants, divided into two groups. The first group consisted of 31 experienced StarCraft II players, who played RTS games for at least six hours per week over the past six months. To ensure that their gaming experience was substantial, these participants had to have played StarCraft II for more than 60% of their total gaming time and were active in competitive play. The second group consisted of 31 non-video game players with minimal gaming experience, having less than six hours of RTS gaming and less than eight hours of total video gaming per week in the last six months.
All participants underwent comprehensive brain imaging using a 3-Tesla MRI scanner. The imaging protocols included T1-weighted anatomical scans and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to assess brain structure. The researchers employed advanced diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) techniques to create detailed maps of the participants’ brain connectivity, focusing on the white matter pathways. Additionally, the study utilized functional MRI (fMRI) data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) to provide a baseline for comparing functional connectivity patterns.
The researchers found that StarCraft II players exhibited increased connectivity within specific brain regions. These regions included the parieto-occipital and frontoparietal networks, which are critical for visual attention, reasoning, and motor control. The enhanced connectivity suggests that extensive gameplay leads to improved communication between these areas, facilitating better cognitive performance.
The brains of video game players also showed a shift towards a more locally integrated network organization. This shift was characterized by higher functional segregation (local connectivity) and lower global efficiency (integration). In practical terms, this means that the brains of gamers were more specialized in processing task-relevant information, likely due to the cognitive demands of playing RTS games.
“Our first idea is that expertise, i.e., video game expertise, will produce an increase in functional integration, that is, a more globally connected brain topology,” Coronel told PsyPost. “But we found the opposite: the brain was more locally connected. We refer to this as ‘mesoscale’ integration: the connectivity was higher and more efficient just in the networks that are involved in skills related to StarCraft 2, such as networks related to attention, memory, and inference.”
When subjected to external noisy stimulation in the computational model, the brains of video game players demonstrated greater resilience compared to non-players. This resilience was reflected in the ability to maintain higher connectivity strength despite the noise, indicating that video game training enhances the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant information and maintain effective communication between regions.
Using a meta-analysis tool called Neurosynth, the researchers correlated the increased brain connectivity in players with specific cognitive functions. They found that the regions with enhanced connectivity in gamers were associated with higher cognitive skills such as reasoning, inference, and attention. This suggests that the cognitive demands of playing RTS games may directly enhance these abilities.
The researchers also identified a core set of structural connections in the brains of video game players that were primarily responsible for the observed functional differences. These connections predominantly involved the parieto-occipital and frontoparietal regions. This structural core was crucial for the enhanced connectivity and functional reorganization seen in the gamers’ brains.
“We have two take-home messages,” Coronel explained. “The first one is just ‘practice makes perfect.’ Expertise in almost any particular discipline can change brain connectivity in a way that makes your brain more ‘efficient’ in that particular discipline. The second one is that some of the connections that are ‘reshaped’ by some skills and disciplines, like playing a musical instrument, professional dancing, and cognitively stimulating activities, are involved in brain aging. So, cognitively challenging activities can be used to protect the brain from accelerated aging.”
While the study provides significant insights, it also has limitations. The sample size was relatively small, and only male participants were included, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Additionally, the cross-sectional nature of the research means it cannot establish causality between video game play and brain connectivity changes. Future research could include larger and more diverse samples to validate the results and experimental studies to explore the causal relationships.
To further understand the relationship between skill level and brain connectivity patterns, Coronel noted, “It would be great to find a relationship between how skilled the players are with the brain connectivity patterns. The other caveat we thought about is the study design, which didn’t allow us to make a direct causal relationship: it is not possible to say, from our study, that the players have altered connectivity concerning non-players because of gaming expertise, or that players are more likely to play video games because their brains are shaped for that.”
Expanding the scope of the research, Coronel outlined the long-term goals: “We want to prove that expertise in other disciplines, like music, tango, and painting, are associated with similar changes in brain connectivity.”
Despite acknowledging the potential benefits of video games, Coronel cautioned, “we want to clarify that we are not recommending people play any video games in any way to improve health. Videogames can be very addictive for some people, and some games don’t provide any benefits at all.”
The study, “Gaming expertise induces meso‑scale brain plasticity and efficiency mechanisms as revealed by whole-brain modeling,” was authored by Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Vicente Medel, Sebastián Orellana, Julio Rodiño, Fernando Lehue, Josephine Cruzat, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Aneta Brzezicka, Patricio Orio, Natalia Kowalczyk-Grębska, and Agustín Ibáñez.