Finding games hard may be down to the size of your brainIf you find games hard (like Andy and especially Tom), it could just be down to certain parts of your brain, a new study has suggested.
The BBC is reporting that US researchers found they could predict how well an amateur player might perform on a game by measuring the volume of key sections of the brain.
These US researchers reckon there are certain parts of the brain which can be disproportionately larger, and this may explain some differences in cognitive ability. Tom and Andy will be pleased.
39 adults (10 men, 29 women) who had spent less than three hours each week playing video games in the previous two years were tested. They had to play one of two versions of a specially developed game. One with a a single goal, the other with shifting priorities.
This is where it gets deep: "MRI scans showed participants with a larger nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain's reward centre, outperformed others in the first few hours, perhaps due to the 'sense of achievement and the emotional reward' accompanying achievement in the earliest stages of learning, the team speculated.
"But those players who ultimately performed best on the game in which priorities changed had larger sections deep in the centre of the brain, known as the caudate and putamen."
If that means anything to you and you want to know more, head over to the
BBC