Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity: gray matter changes resulting from training with a commercial video game

Molecular Psychiatry

S. Kühn

T. Gleich

R. C. Lorenz

U. Lindenberger

J. Gallinat

Brain

Female

Functional Laterality

Hippocampus

Humans

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Male

Motivation

Nerve Fibers, Unmyelinated

Neuronal Plasticity

Organ Size

Orientation

Practice (Psychology)

Prefrontal Cortex

Space Perception

Surveys and Questionnaires

Thinking

Time Factors

Video games

Young adult

Video gaming is a highly pervasive activity, providing a multitude of complex cognitive and motor demands. Gaming can be seen as an intense training of several skills. Associated cerebral structural plasticity induced has not been investigated so far. Comparing a control with a video gaming training group that was trained for 2 months for at least 30 min per day with a platformer game, we found significant gray matter (GM) increase in right hippocampal formation (HC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral cerebellum in the training group. The HC increase correlated with changes from egocentric to allocentric navigation strategy. GM increases in HC and DLPFC correlated with participants' desire for video gaming, evidence suggesting a predictive role of desire in volume change. Video game training augments GM in brain areas crucial for spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory and motor performance going along with evidence for behavioral changes of navigation strategy. The presented video game training could therefore be used to counteract known risk factors for mental disease such as smaller hippocampus and prefrontal cortex volume in, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disease.

19

2

265-271

Feb 2014

Mol. Psychiatry

Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity

eng

10.1038/mp.2013.120

1476-5578