Pokemon Leaves Traces in the Brain
Brain regions of two adults compared: on the left that of a non-Pokemon player, on the right that of a Pokemon player. Colored red is the Occipitotemporale Sulcus, the area that shows the reaction to Pokemon images.Image rights: Jesse Gomez
How does the brain learn where it stores what information? Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle: Those who now only understand the train station have not grown up with Pokémon, the pocket monsters. In case someone wondered if these beings with the miraculous names left their mark on children's heads - researchers have found out.
In 1996, children immersed themselves in a completely new world of characters: Pokémon! Curious, spherical, angular figures with even stranger names populated playing cards and gameboys, an infinite number of children squatted for hours on the same handy mini toys and playing cards. For all parents who were frowning at the time, "What are these animal-like creatures, these pocket monsters, doing with my child?" there is now an answer.
In fact, the intense play with the characters left traces in the brain and in the same place for everyone: Psychologists from the California University of Berkeley found out. They compared brain reactions from former Pokemon players and non-players to the sight of Pokémon - and other images. And indeed it turned out that if you played a lot of Pokémon as a child, you also reacted to the game characters as an adult - at the same place in the brain.
When playing Pokémon, the eyes focus on a tiny section on a small screen. With this, research confirms the eccentricity-bias theory: It says that, on the one hand, the size of the object we look at determines which brain region responds to it, and on the other hand whether it is a central or peripheral image component. Study author Jesse Gomez:
It has always been open why certain brain regions react to faces and words, but not to cars, for example. It was also unclear why these reactions occur in all people in the same brain region.
Studies in monkeys at Harvard Medical School have investigated this and found that when the brain is still developing, this happens in the visual cortex at a young age. But what about people? Different or the same for everyone? So Gomez suspected that only the people who had played Pokémon intensely would have brain reactions to the sight of these characters. Because they had to know all the characters they were supposed to catch and train in the game - and that could be 150.
Brain regions of two adults compared: on the left that of a non-Pokemon player, on the right that of a Pokemon player. Colored red is the Occipitotemporale Sulcus, the area that shows the reaction to Pokemon images.Image rights: Jesse Gomez
How does the brain learn where it stores what information? Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle: Those who now only understand the train station have not grown up with Pokémon, the pocket monsters. In case someone wondered if these beings with the miraculous names left their mark on children's heads - researchers have found out.
In 1996, children immersed themselves in a completely new world of characters: Pokémon! Curious, spherical, angular figures with even stranger names populated playing cards and gameboys, an infinite number of children squatted for hours on the same handy mini toys and playing cards. For all parents who were frowning at the time, "What are these animal-like creatures, these pocket monsters, doing with my child?" there is now an answer.
In fact, the intense play with the characters left traces in the brain and in the same place for everyone: Psychologists from the California University of Berkeley found out. They compared brain reactions from former Pokemon players and non-players to the sight of Pokémon - and other images. And indeed it turned out that if you played a lot of Pokémon as a child, you also reacted to the game characters as an adult - at the same place in the brain.
When playing Pokémon, the eyes focus on a tiny section on a small screen. With this, research confirms the eccentricity-bias theory: It says that, on the one hand, the size of the object we look at determines which brain region responds to it, and on the other hand whether it is a central or peripheral image component. Study author Jesse Gomez:
It has always been open why certain brain regions react to faces and words, but not to cars, for example. It was also unclear why these reactions occur in all people in the same brain region.
Studies in monkeys at Harvard Medical School have investigated this and found that when the brain is still developing, this happens in the visual cortex at a young age. But what about people? Different or the same for everyone? So Gomez suspected that only the people who had played Pokémon intensely would have brain reactions to the sight of these characters. Because they had to know all the characters they were supposed to catch and train in the game - and that could be 150.
WHAT MAKES FORMER POKEMON PLAYERS SO ATTRACTIVE FOR BRAIN RESEARCH
In order to test the effects of visual stimulation on adolescents whose brains are still developing, test subjects would have to sit in front of the same pictures for hours on a regular basis for years and have them looked at at the same distance. Since this is not feasible for ethical reasons, the researchers came up with the Pokemon idea: The hype surrounding the bizarre figure world began in the 1990s, initially with static figures in black and white on gameboy devices. Children spent hours playing the game for years, everyone kept about the same distance from the Gameboy to their eyes and everyone started with the same set of figures. A perfect examination environment, without any external influence, the consequences of which can therefore be examined in retrospect.
The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior .
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