A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence at the University of Toronto reveals that playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention.

“Superior visual attention is crucial in many important everyday activities,” added Spence. “It’s necessary for things such as driving a car, monitoring changes on a computer display, or even avoiding tripping while walking through a room with children’s toys scattered on the floor.”

The research was supported by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada in the form of Discovery Grants to Spence and co-author Claude Alain of the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre and U of T’s Psychology Department.

The research team also included U of T PhD candidate Cho Kin Cheng, Jing Feng, a postdoc at the Rotman Research Institute, and former undergraduate student Lisa D’Angelo.

The study will appear in the June 2012 issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, published by MIT Press. Early access to uncorrected proofs of the article is available now at:www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_00192

Source: University of Toronto