Video games as rich environments to foster brain plasticity

Two Sides of the Same Virtual Coin: Investigating Psychosocial Effects of Video Game Play, including Stress Relief Motivations as a Gateway to Problematic Video Game Usage

Video gamers can play to negate the psychological impact of stress, which may become problematic when users over-rely on the stress relief potential of gaming. This study used a repeated measures experimental design to investigate the relationships between stress, video gaming, and problematic video gaming behaviours in a convenience sample of 40 students at a UK university. The results indicated that positive affect increased and negative affect decreased, whilst a biological stress measure (instantaneous pulse rate) also decreased after a short video gaming session (t(36) = 4.82, p < 0.001, d = 0.79). The results also suggested that video gaming can act as a short-term buffer against the physiological impact of stress. Further research should focus on testing individuals who have been tested for gaming disorder, as opposed to the general population. Research could also utilise variations of the methodological framework used in this study to examine the intensity of a stress relief effect under different social situations. The study's findings in relation to published works are also discussed.

Evaluating the effect of action-like video game play and of casual video game play on anxiety in adolescents with elevated anxiety: protocol for a multi-center, parallel group, assessor-blind, randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Adolescence is a critical period for the onset and maintenance of anxiety disorders, which raises the importance of intervening early; one possibility of doing so is via digital interventions. Within that research field, at least two important research paths have been explored in the past years. On the one hand, the anxiolytic effect of casual video games has been tested as such gaming activity may distract away from anxious thoughts through the induction of flow and redirection of attention toward the game and thus away of anxious thoughts. On the other hand, the bidirectional link between weak attentional control and higher anxiety has led to the design of interventions aiming at improving attentional control such as working memory training studies. Taking stock that another genre of gaming, action video games, improves attentional control, game-based interventions that combines cognitive training and action-like game features would seem relevant. This three-arm randomized controlled trial aims to evaluate the feasibility and the efficacy of two video game interventions to document how each may potentially alleviate adolescent anxiety-related symptoms when deployed fully on-line.

METHODS

The study aims to recruit 150 individuals, 12 to 14 years of age, with high levels of anxiety as reported by the parents' online form of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders questionnaire. This trial contrasts a child-friendly, "action-like" video game designed to improve attentional control abilities in a progressive and stepwise manner (Eco-Rescue), a casual puzzle video game selected to act as a positive distraction tool (Bejeweled) and finally a control group with no assigned training intervention to control for possible test-retest effects (No-training). Participants will be assigned randomly to one of the three study arms. They will be assessed for main (anxiety) and secondary outcomes (attentional control, affective working memory) at three time points, before training (T1), one week after the 6-week training (T2) and four months after completing the training (T3).

DISCUSSION

The results will provide evidence for the feasibility and the efficacy of two online video game interventions at improving mental health and emotional well-being in adolescents with high levels of anxiety. This project will contribute unique knowledge to the field, as few studies have examined the effects of video game play in the context of digital mental health interventions for adolescents.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

The trial is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05923944, June 20, 2023).

Plasticity-stability dynamics during post-training processing of learning

Learning continues beyond the end of training. Post-training learning is supported by changes in plasticity and stability in the brain during both wakefulness and sleep. However, the lack of a unified measure for assessing plasticity and stability dynamics during training and post-training periods has limited our understanding of how these dynamics shape learning. Focusing primarily on procedural learning, we integrate work using behavioral paradigms and a recently developed measure, the excitatory-to-inhibitory (E/I) ratio, to explore the delicate balance between plasticity and stability and its relationship to post-training learning. This reveals plasticity-stability cycles during both wakefulness and sleep that enhance learning and protect it from new learning during post-training processing.

Multimodal Approach to Assess a Virtual Reality-based Surgical Training Platform

Virtual reality (VR) can bring numerous benefits to the learning process. Combining a VR environment with physiological sensors can be beneficial in skill assessment. We aim to investigate trainees' physiological (ECG) and behavioral differences during the virtual reality-based surgical training environment. Our finding showed a significant association between the VR-Score and all participants' total NASA-TLX workload score. The extent of the NASA-TLX workload score was negatively correlated with VR-Score (R2 =0.15, P < 0.03). In time-domain ECG analysis, we found that RMSSD (R2 =0.16, P < 0.05) and pNN50 (R2 =0.15, P < 0.05) scores correlated with significantly higher VR-score of all participants. In this study, we used SVM (linear kernel) and Logistic Regression classification techniques to classify the participants as gamers and non-gamers using data from VR headsets. Both SVM and Logistic Regression accurately classified the participants as gamers and non-gamers with 83% accuracy. For both SVM and Linear Regression, precision was noted as 88%, recall as 83%, and f1-score as 83%. There is increasing interest in characterizing trainees' physiological and behavioral activity profiles in a VR environment, aiming to develop better training and assessment methodologies.

Video game experience affects performance, cognitive load, and brain activity in laparoscopic surgery training

Objectives

Video games can be a valuable tool for surgery training. Individuals who interact or play video games tend to have a better visuospatial ability when compared to non-gamers. Numerous studies suggest that video game experience is associated with faster acquisition, greater sharpening, and longer retention of laparoscopic skills. Given the neurocognitive complexity of surgery skill, multimodal approaches are required to understand how video game playing enhances laparoscopy skill.

Material and Methods

Twenty-seven students with no laparoscopy experience and varying levels of video game experience performed standard laparoscopic training tasks. Their performance, subjective cognitive loading, and prefrontal cortical activity were recorded and analyzed. As a reference point to use in comparing the two novice groups, we also included data from 13 surgeons with varying levels of laparoscopy experience and no video game experience.

Results

Results indicated that video game experience was correlated with higher performance (R2 = 0.22, p <0.01) and lower cognitive load (R2 = 0.21, p <0.001), and the prefrontal cortical activation of students with gaming experience was relatively lower than those without gaming experience. In terms of these variables, gaming experience in novices tended to produce effects similar to those of laparoscopy experience in surgeons.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that along the dimensions of performance, cognitive load, and brain activity, the effects of video gaming experience on novice laparoscopy trainees are similar to those of real-world laparoscopy experience on surgeons. We believe that the neural underpinnings of surgery skill and its links with gaming experience need to be investigated further using wearable functional brain imaging.

Non-game like training benefits spoken foreign-language processing in children with dyslexia

Children with dyslexia often face difficulties in learning foreign languages, which is reflected as weaker neural activation. However, digital language-learning applications could support learning-induced plastic changes in the brain. Here we aimed to investigate whether plastic changes occur in children with dyslexia more readily after targeted training with a digital language-learning game or similar training without game-like elements. We used auditory event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically, the mismatch negativity (MMN), to study learning-induced changes in the brain responses. Participants were 24 school-aged Finnish-speaking children with dyslexia and 24 age-matched typically reading control children. They trained English speech sounds and words with “Say it again, kid!” (SIAK) language-learning game for 5 weeks between ERP measurements. During the game, the players explored game boards and produced English words aloud to score stars as feedback from an automatic speech recognizer. To compare the effectiveness of the training type (game vs. non-game), we embedded in the game some non-game levels stripped of all game-like elements. In the dyslexia group, the non-game training increased the MMN amplitude more than the game training, whereas in the control group the game training increased the MMN response more than the non-game training. In the dyslexia group, the MMN increase with the non-game training correlated with phonological awareness: the children with poorer phonological awareness showed a larger increase in the MMN response. Improved neural processing of foreign speech sounds as indicated by the MMN increase suggests that targeted training with a simple application could alleviate some spoken foreign-language learning difficulties that are related to phonological processing in children with dyslexia.

The mechanisms of far transfer from cognitive training: specifying the role of distraction suppression

Cognitive training aims to produce a durable transfer to untrained abilities (i.e., far transfer). However, designing effective programs is difficult, because far transfer mechanisms are not well understood. Greenwood and Parasuraman (Neuropsychol 30(6):742-755. https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000235 , 2016) proposed that the ability to ignore distractions is key in promoting far transfer. While the authors identified working-memory training based on the N-back task as an effective way to train distraction suppression, a recent meta-analysis concluded that this form of training rarely produces far transfer. Such inconsistency casts doubt onto the importance of distraction suppression in far transfer and calls for further examination of the role of this ability in cognitive training effectiveness. We propose here to conceptualize distraction suppression in the light of the load theory of attention, which distinguishes two mechanisms of distractor rejection depending on the level and type of information load involved: perceptual selection and cognitive control. From that standpoint, N-back training engages a single suppression mechanism, namely cognitive control, because it mainly involves low perceptual load. In the present study, we compared the efficacy of N-back training in producing far transfer to that of a new response-competition training paradigm that solicits both distraction suppression mechanisms. Response-competition training was the only one to produce far transfer effects relative to an active control training. These findings provided further support to Greenwood and Parasuraman's hypothesis and suggest that both selection perception and cognitive control need to be engaged during training to increase the ability to suppress distraction, hence to promote far transfer.

Gaming enhances learning-induced plastic changes in the brain

Digital games may benefit children's learning, yet the factors that induce gaming benefits to cognition are not well known. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of digital game-based learning in children by comparing the learning of foreign speech sounds and words in a digital game or a non-game digital application. To evaluate gaming-induced plastic changes in the brain, we used the mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response that reflects the access to long-term memory representations. We recorded auditory brain responses from 37 school-aged Finnish-speaking children before and after playing a computer-based language-learning game. The MMN amplitude increased between the pre- and post-measurement for the game condition but not for the non-game condition, suggesting that the gaming intervention enhanced learning more than the non-game intervention. The results indicate that digital games can be beneficial for children's speech-sound learning and that gaming elements per se, not just practice time, support learning.

Effects of exergame and video game training on cognitive and physical function in older adults: A randomized controlled trial

Few studies have simultaneously explored the training effects of exergame and video game. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of exergame and video game training on cognitive and physical function in healthy older adults. Eighty-four healthy older adults were randomly assigned to exergame training group, video game training group, and control group. Cognitive and physical function was measured before and after the training. Both training groups improved in verbal memory and aerobic endurance, but the training effects were greater in the exergame training group. The exergame training group also showed significant improvement in lower limb strength and balance. The current study provides evidence that exergame training, incorporating both cognitive engagement and physical activity, exerts greater benefits than cognitively engaging video game training alone. The findings shed lights into the future use of exergame in preventing cognitive and physical function decline in older adults.