作者：Erin Robinson

我上高中时接触过一个心理学教师“Max”，他曾在某天告诉我们：“如果我可以重新选择的话，我想去学习和研究人类的大脑。一百多年前，神经系统科学就获得了与物理和化学相同的殊荣，可能带来重大的发现。”

这番话一直伴随着我，此后我获得了心理学学位，在神经系统科学实验室中工作了一段时间，直到电子游戏改变了我的生活。

去年，我应邀前往GDC China发表有关神经系统科学和游戏的交叉点的演讲。我查询了将近60份的当代研究报告，挑选出那些在创新性和创意性方面引起我注意的内容。以下是我们之前所不知道的10件事情。

1、失忆的人却记得《俄罗斯方块》玩法

或许你会感到惊讶，科学家不仅研究电子游戏对大脑产生的影响，他们还使用游戏来解析大脑的运作方式。

有些人罹患顺行性遗忘，这些不幸的人因为脑损伤而失去了形成新记忆的能力。电影《记忆碎片》中的主角罹患的正是这种遗忘症，他无法回想起任何医疗事故之后发生的事情。

但是，患有这种遗忘症的人却可以学会玩《俄罗斯方块》，而且经过多次训练之后技术还会提升（游戏邦注：尽管患者的技术比不上常人）。而且，还有更加离奇的事情。你可曾试过花大量时间做同样的事情，尤其是某些新鲜的事情，然后尝试进入睡眠？你可曾注意到会大脑中会产生与你刚刚做过的事情相关的视觉影像？

这些被称为入睡影像，遗忘症患者同样可以看到类似《俄罗斯方块》中的方块的东西，尽管他们无法回想起玩过这款游戏。

这是最新可以证明大脑中有不同记忆通道的证据：外显记忆（游戏邦注：即我们记住的人、地点和经历）和程序记忆（游戏邦注：即我们通过实践习得的技能）。而且，某个记忆通道的受损并不会影响到另一个。

同时，能够让你产生想法、心理影响和梦境的行为被称为“俄罗斯方块效应”。这便是电子游戏能够给我们带来的其他成果。

2、治疗瘾君子的药物同样适用于游戏沉迷者

事实表明，沉迷游戏者的某些大脑参数与毒品上瘾者相同。在近期的PET观测研究中，研究人员将沉迷网游者的大脑与毒品上瘾者相对比。

在与冲动控制和奖励处理有关的区域中，沉迷游戏者有异常的行为。

这种混乱思维的主要特征便是人们无法抵制做出某种行动的冲动，尽管这种行为可能伤害到自己和他人。这种情况不仅在毒品上瘾人员身上出现，还出现在其他冲动控制失调行为上，比如赌博上瘾。

那么，如果上瘾玩家的情况与其他种类上瘾者相同的话，我们能够用相同的方法来治疗这些对游戏上瘾的人呢？有一些科学家决定尝试一下。科学家将安非拉酮这种通常提供给海洛因上瘾者以帮助其缓解吸毒欲望的药物让沉迷于《星际争霸》的玩家服用（游戏邦注：他们认定每周玩的时间超过30个小时就是对《星际争霸》上瘾的表现）。

结果是，药物发挥了作用。6周之后，患者联网玩游戏的欲望降低了，玩游戏的时间减少，消沉的症状也得到缓解。在核磁共振扫描中，当玩家看到《星际争霸》的图片时，大脑中与渴望相关的区域的激活度也有所减少。药物通过抑制多巴胺和去甲肾上腺素的再吸收来发挥作用，这两种激素都与奖励处理有关。换句话说，你的细胞保持高兴状态的时间更长了，可能足够暂时性地抵制冲动。

3、儿童烧伤患者在玩虚拟现实游戏时的疼痛感减小

我们都很熟悉，游戏能够让人逃避现实，但是现在有充分的证据表明电子游戏还可以缓解某些真正肉体上的疼痛。

有项研究针对的是小儿科烧伤患者在更换伤口包扎时的疼痛感。通常对这些患者采取的做法是使用大量止痛药，但是这种做法可能带来不必要的副作用，比如反胃和昏睡感。

于是有人提出了某个睿智的想法，让这些孩子在这个过程中玩虚拟现实游戏。据报告，孩子不仅觉得疼痛感明显下降，而且还止痛药的消极副作用也更小（游戏邦注：患者的护士也反映了这种情况）。

据称，虚拟现实游戏能够打断和分离大脑处理的当前思维，包括疼痛。这个过程的机制还不甚清晰，但是虚拟现实游戏似乎至少能够减少患者对疼痛感的察觉。尽管这项研究的儿童患者数只有9人，但其结果与他们在成年人身上得到的结果相同。我简直难以相信，有人还能够发掘出虚拟现实头盔的其他用处。

4、主流新闻媒介忽视了第三变量问题

你或许对“相互关系并不等同于因果关系”这个格言很熟悉。从大体上来说，这句话的意思是相关的两个事件并不一定存在因果关系。第三变量问题与之类似。比如，如果你绘制年度游泳事故数量和冰棒销售数量的图表，就会发现冰棒销售越多事故也就越多。这里存在的问题是我们并没有注意到天气变暖这个第三变量，这才是真正影响其他两个变量的因素。

很显然，冰棒根本不会导致游泳事故。但是，当你处理某些不完整信息时，将这个知识运用到实践中就变得很困难。

有项研究针对的是电子游戏和儿童的注意力问题。假设研究以小学生为对象，让他们的家长提供有关儿童玩电子游戏习惯的细节信息。1年之后，你评估孩子的注意力问题，肯定会得出玩游戏的孩子在学校表现得较差（游戏邦注：这是个普遍结论）。

但是，你能够得出是游戏导致这些孩子产生注意力问题的结论吗？反过来又如何，有没有可能是那些已经难以集中注意力的孩子自己选择玩这些游戏呢？

这些结果中有许多潜在的“第三变量”：学校或家里的问题导致儿童分神，在社交中遇到困难导致他们选择游戏，懒散的习惯促使他们更偏向游戏、电视、漫画和电影等等。

所以，尽管这些证据很吸引人，但是研究绝不会用“导致”这个词来描述电子游戏和注意力问题之间的关系（游戏邦注：使用“有关”或“有所联系”之类的字眼更为精确）。在这样的研究和报告中使用“导致”或“证明”会产生学术问题。

但是，这些模糊字眼组成的新闻标题并不夺人眼球，所以我们才会看到那些表述很不准确，只为争夺眼球的新闻。

5、任天堂Wii可帮助中风患者恢复健康

10年前，如果中风患者住在医院附近是件很幸运的事情，因为可以使用到必要的康复设备，尽管并不便宜。但是现在情况已经有所不同了，两年前发布的一项研究报告表示，经过两周的Wii训练后，中风患者的移动和协调性得到改善。而且，或许更为重要的是，16位研究参与患者都表示Wii堪比传统疗法，还能够让治疗过程更加快乐。

研究将Wii疗法和传统疗法结合起来，甚至有专门的医师电子监控玩家在家中玩主机游戏的情况。这项研究的结果令人充满希望，因为中风是美国长期残疾患者的首要诱因。

6、Mii虚拟象更能反映玩家的自我意识

不只有心理医疗师注意到了Wii的研究强力。在去年发表的一项研究中，实验人员让参与者在Mii Channel上创建自己的虚拟形象。半数参与者需根据自己的情况精确设定虚拟形象。另一半人创造的虚拟形象呈现的是每个参与者对自我的理想目标，包括体重、头发和特征等。

创建出理想虚拟形象的参与者在玩游戏的时候会更偏爱自己的虚拟形象，研究将这种情况称为“化身自我联系”。化身自我连系的衡量尺度是玩家是否同意“我认为Mii呈现的就是我自己”此类的言论。

尽管实验人员承认该研究存在一定的局限性，但是他们似乎为“（游戏）可塑造自我”的观点找到了合适的证据。

7、精神分裂症患者玩过电子游戏后症状较少

精神分裂症患者可能会出现所谓的“积极症状”，包括幻觉以及混乱的言语和思维等（游戏邦注：“消极症状”指正常行为的缺陷）。服用的抑制药物会产生副作用，比如思维缓慢、言语不清和移动问题。这是个很难治愈的疾病。

但是，科研人员发现在玩过8周的电子游戏之后，患者的积极症状和副作用都有所好转。令人惊奇的是，玩哪种游戏似乎根本无关紧要，包括网络赌博游戏、RPG、战略游戏和射击游戏等都可以。研究参与者的情况比那些将时间花费在电视和电影上的患者要更好。

积极症状减少的事实显示，电子游戏激活额皮质的方法是非常重要的（游戏邦注：额皮质涉及到计划、做决定和其他高等认知任务）。科研人员还将电子游戏与吸烟这种传统疗法相比较。传统观点认为，吸烟有助于促进大脑特定部位释放出多巴胺，从而缓解精神分裂症状。研究人员最后得出的结论是，电子游戏有可能成为可行的替代性疗法。

8、《反恐精英》提高玩家的视觉处理能力

有名男生说《反恐精英》使他的驾驶技术得到提升。我们可以从人们的行为中读出他的意图，这意味着你可以猜到他们接下来的行动。

大量证据表明：游戏玩家普遍能够较好地处理视觉上的复杂信息。

在某项研究中，参与者需尽快识别目标物体面对的方向（游戏邦注：在这项研究中，调查人员要求玩家说出卡通鱼面向左还是右）。这项任务逐渐变得越来越难，因为后面他们引进了视觉分散物体（游戏邦注：即许多面朝不同方向的鱼）。结果表明，游戏玩家不仅在这项任务中花的时间较少，而且能够更好地排除分散物体的干扰，做出更为准确的回应。

而且，之前的研究还表明动作类电子游戏能够改善注意力集中能力，使玩家能够更好地分配他们在不同空间和时间的注意力。

这种处理能够也扩展到了听觉领域。在类似的测试中，参与者带上耳机然后判断哪边播放音乐。两个耳机都会同时播放白噪音，以掩盖所播放的音乐。有趣的是，玩家和非游戏玩家的准确性相同，但是游戏玩家的判断速度会更快。

这个信息无疑给教育界专家带来了福音，因为这一领域的许多专家都在研究如何将游戏转变为学习工具。

9、电子游戏改善老年人的认知能力

至少有一项研究证实老年人可以通过保持思维活跃的方式来改善认知能力。另一项研究观察发现，任天堂DS上的益智游戏比纸笔游戏更具吸引力。事实上，老年人能够在年轻人感到无聊的逻辑和益智游戏中找到更多的乐趣。

10、《超级猴子球2》对人类大脑的影响

《超级猴子球》的基本内容是，引导猴子向某个目标前进，收集香蕉以获得额外的分数，避免掉下平台。但是根据近期的研究，这些事件能够引发不同的脑电波。

EEG是个可以测量大脑表面附近电子脉冲的设备。根据所激发的区域不同，我们的思维样式能够产生不同的电波。

在你在玩《超级猴子球》时，你会发现脑电波的反应是：中电极theta激活下降，前电极高alpha电极下降，前电极beta电极增加。这种观察到你的注意力集中的方式确实非常有趣。

结论

我觉得游戏和神经系统科学还会有更深层次的交集。游戏正帮助我们解开我们所不了解的内容，例如从上瘾和遗忘症等混乱到疼痛和视觉信息的处理。游戏可以处理某些现在迫切需要解决的疾病，包括身体康复等问题，它们也可以帮助我们了解自己之所以会感到受到奖励的原因，甚至如何对自己进行定位。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Top 10 Weird Children Of Video Games and Neuroscience

Erin Robinson

When I was in high school I had a psychology teacher we called “Max.” On the day we were about to start learning about the human brain Max paused, closed the textbook, and said something that determined the next few years of my life. “If I could do it all again,” he said, “I’d go and study the brain. Neuroscience is at the same place physics and chemistry were at a hundred years ago — on the brink of all the big discoveries.”

It stayed with me — I got my degree in psychology and spent some time working in neuroscience labs before video games reclaimed my life.

I was invited to speak at GDC China last year about the intersection of neuroscience and gaming. I tracked down almost 60 contemporary research papers and handpicked the ones stood out to me in terms of their innovation and creativity. Here are 10 things we didn’t know before.

1. People with no memory can remember playing Tetris

You may be surprised to learn that scientists are not only studying the effects of video games on the brain — they are using games to help unravel how the brain works.

Consider anterograde amnesiacs, the unfortunate lot who have lost the ability to form new memories due to brain damage. It’s the kind of amnesia suffered by the main character in the movie Memento, who lives in an ever-updating present, unable to remember anything that happened after his traumatic accident.

And yet, people with this type of amnesia can learn to play Tetris just fine, and even get better with practice (although not as well as people without brain injury). And it gets weirder. Have you ever spent a lot of time doing something repetitive, particularly something new, and then tried to fall asleep? Have you noticed the intrusion of visual images related to what you were just doing? Those are called hypnagogic images, and you guessed it, the amnesiac patients still saw things that looked like Tetris blocks despite having no recollection of playing the game.

This is the latest bit of evidence to suggest that there are separate memory pathways in the brain: explicit memories, which are the people, places, and experiences we remember, and procedural memories, which are the skills we learn with practice. And it’s possible to suffer damage to one pathway and not lose the other.

By the way, becoming obsessed with an activity to the point that it begins to intrude your thoughts, mental images, and dreams is known as the “Tetris Effect.” So that’s something else video games have given us.

2. You can use the same drug to treat a heroin addiction and a StarCraft addiction

It turns out that gaming overusers share some brain characteristics with drug addicts. In a recent PET scan study, the brains of internet gaming overusers were compared to their non-gaming counterparts.

The gaming overusers showed abnormal activity in regions linked to impulse control and reward processing.

A main feature of this disordered thinking is the inability to resist the impulse to perform an action, despite its harm to oneself and others. It’s commonly seen in not only drug addiction, but other disorders of impulse control like compulsive gambling.
So if the brain of a compulsive gamer functions like an addict’s, can we treat gaming overuse like we would an addiction? One group of scientists decided to try it out. Bupropion, a drug commonly given to heroin addicts to cut their cravings, was given to a group of gamers who were excessively playing (what else?) StarCraft. The unhealthy level of StarCraft was defined as more than 30 hours per week.

The result: the drug helped. After six weeks, the patients had lower cravings for internet game play, less total game play time, and fewer symptoms of depression. Additionally, when the patients were shown images from StarCraft during an MRI scan, they showed less activation in the brain areas related to craving. The drug acts by inhibiting the reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine, both involved in the processing of rewards. In other words, your cells stay happier longer, perhaps enough to fight off the impulse temporarily.

3. Child burn victims feel less pain when playing a VR game

We’re all familiar with games as escapism, but there is now solid evidence that video games can also modulate the effects of real, physical pain.

One study looked at the pain experienced by pediatric burn patients during a particularly grueling process: the changing of their dressings. The usual treatment for these patients involved a strong painkiller, but these tended to have unwanted side effects like nausea and lethargy.

Then someone had the brilliant idea to have these kids play a virtual reality game (helmet and all) during the process. Not only did the children report significantly less pain, but they also felt fewer of the negative side effects of the painkillers (their nurses provided similar reports).

It is thought that the VR games interrupt and distract the way that current thoughts, including pain, are processed by the brain. The mechanisms for that process aren’t clear, but VR games seem to at least reduce the perception of pain. While this study only looked at nine children, the results are similar to what they’ve found in adults. My takeaway: I cannot believe somebody found a use for VR helmets.

4. No one at any major news outlet understands the third variable problem

You’re probably familiar with the axiom “correlation does not equal causation.” Roughly, this means that just because two events are correlated, one does not necessarily cause the other. The third variable problem is similar. For instance, if you graphed the number of swimming accidents and Popsicle sales over the course of a year, you’d see that more Popsicles tend to mean more accidents. The problem here is that we’re not looking at a third variable — the warm weather — that is actually affecting the other two.

It seems obvious on paper that Popsicles don’t cause swimming accidents. It becomes difficult, however, to put that knowledge into practice when you’re working with incomplete information.

Consider one study about video games and attention problems in children. Say you follow a group of grade school boys and girls and ask their parents to provide detailed information about their video gaming habits. A year later you evaluate the children for attention problems, and sure enough, the gamers are worse off in school (a common outcome).

But can you say the games caused these children to develop attention problems? What about the reverse — that kids who already find it hard to focus choose to play these games?

There are a multitude of potential “third variables” for these results: problems at school or home chasing the children to distraction, difficulties with socializing that lead them to choose games over peers, habits of inactivity that lead them to not just games, but TV, comics, movies… and there could be many others.

So despite this tantalizing evidence, the study never uses the word “cause” to describe the relationship between video games and attention problems (more accurate is “linked to” or “associated with”). To use the word “cause” or, God forbid, “prove” in this context, would be risking an academic career.

But that doesn’t really make for a good headline, so instead we get things like this.

5. The Nintendo Wii is helping stroke victims regain limb use

If you were a stroke patient 10 years ago, you were lucky if you lived close to a hospital that had the necessary rehabilitation equipment — and that stuff didn’t come cheap. But things are different now: in a study published two years ago, a small group of stroke patients showed significant improvements to movement and coordination after two weeks of training with the Wii. And, perhaps more critically, all 16 of them said the Wii was comparable to, if not better than, conventional therapy — with the added bonus of being enjoyable.

The study made the case for using Wii training in conjunction with conventional therapies, and even suggested a doctor could monitor the patient’s progress electronically while they played in their own homes. This is a significant cause for hope — stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States.

6. Your Mii avatar says more about you than you thought

It’s not just physiotherapists who see the research potential of the Wii. In a study published last year, experimenters had a group of participants make avatars of themselves on the Mii Channel. Half the participants were asked to make an avatar that depicted them as accurately as possible, their “real self.” The other half were asked to create an avatar that represented their ideal self, in terms of body weight, hair, features, etc.

The participants who created an idealized Mii felt far more attachment to their avatars while playing a game, which the study referred to as the “avatar-self connection.” The avatar-self connection was measured by how much the player agreed or disagreed with statements like this: “I consider the Mii I created to be me (it reflects who I consider myself to be or the way that I want to present myself to others).”

Although the experimenters acknowledged a lot of limitations in their study, they seemed to find evidence for the idea of a “malleable self.” That is, a perception of oneself that temporarily becomes more in tune with the avatar you’re seeing on the screen.

7. People with schizophrenia experience fewer symptoms after playing video games

The term “schizophrenia” actually encompasses a broad spectrum of possible symptoms and deficits. People who have this disease may suffer from what are called “positive symptoms,” which include delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech and thinking (“negative symptoms” refer to deficits of normal behavior). They may also suffer from side effects caused by antipsychotic medications, including slurred speech, slow thinking, and movement problems. As evidenced by that list, it is a difficult disease to treat.

But in the only study of its kind, scientists found that patients showed improvements in both their positive symptoms and side effects after eight weeks of video game play. Amazingly, it didn’t seem to matter what kind of game they played — internet gambling games, RPGs, strategy games, and shooting games were all used in the study. Yet this group of patients scored better in all symptoms compared to a control group of patients who spent their time watching TV and movies.

The fact that positive symptoms decreased, especially delusions, suggested that the way video games activate the frontal cortex was important (the frontal cortex is involved in planning, decision-making, and other high-level cognition tasks). The scientists also compared the effect of video games to cigarette smoking. Apparently smoking has long been known to mitigate the symptoms of schizophrenia by facilitating the release of dopamine in certain parts of the brain. The scientists then humbly suggested video games as a possible alternative.

8. Counter-Strike turns you into a visual processing ninja

My boyfriend always says that Counter-Strike made him a better driver. Being able to read people’s intentions from their behavior means being able to guess their next move, even before they know it themselves. How many times have you seen half a sec second of someone’s driving to know they’re going to do something stupid? With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, “You might be a gamer if…”

It turns out there’s plenty of evidence for this phenomenon: gamers are, in general, better at processing visually complicated information.

In one study participants were asked to identify, as fast as they could, which way a target object was facing (in this case, whether a cartoon fish was facing left or right). This task got progressively harder, as they introduced visual distractor objects (a bunch of fish facing various directions). Not only were the gamers just faster at this task, but they also were better able to “tune out” the distractors and give more accurate responses.

The study I just mentioned also includes this excellent quote, which I choose to mentally read in a Sagan voice: “Previous research suggests that action video game play improves attentional resources, allowing gamers to better allocate their attention across both space and time.”

This processing power also extends to the auditory domain. A similar study asked participants to put on a set of headphones and determine which side was playing a tone. Both earphones were also playing white noise in order to mask the tone. Interestingly, both the gamers and non-gamers had about the same accuracy. The gamers were just faster at it, even as the tone got quieter and quieter.

This transfer of learning from one domain (video games) to another (unrelated information processing tasks) is something of a holy grail to education researchers. Academia and education experts are abuzz with ideas about how to turn the power of games into a tool for learning. In fact, I’m doing some contract work right now to design an educational game that integrates scientific literature with rewarding gameplay. I think we’ve only seen the very beginning of games and learning.

9. Video games and the aging population are going to be BFFs

At least one study has shown that seniors (sometimes adorably referred to as “silver gamers”) can actually improve their cognitive function by staying mentally active. Another study observed that seniors found puzzle games on the Nintendo DS more engaging than pen-and-paper activities like crosswords. In fact, seniors take pleasure in logic and problem-solving games that younger generations would find tedious (congratulations on making it this far in an article that’s almost all text, by the way).

10. Here’s what happens when you scan someone’s brain during Super Monkey Ball 2

If you’ve never played a Super Monkey Ball game, the basic structure is: steer a monkey towards a goal, collect bananas for extra points, and avoid falling off the edge of the level. And according to one recent study, each of those events triggers a different pattern of brainwaves.

An EEG is a device that measures electrical impulses near the surface of the brain (it looks a bit like a shower cap filled with electrodes). Our thought patterns evoke different electrical charges depending on which areas of the brain are active.

And when you stick Super Monkey Ball in there, you get findings like “Picking up bananas evoked decreased theta activation on central electrodes, decreased high alpha activation on frontal electrodes, and increased beta activation on frontal electrodes.” Which is a fancy way of saying you’re paying attention.

You might expect all of the game components to have this sort of effect, but not so: falling off the edge of the level actually triggered activation in the motor areas of the brain, which may relate to an actual feeling of falling (who hasn’t felt such a visceral reaction to losing a game?) And reaching the goal? That put the players’ brains into a relaxed state.

Conclusion

I believe we’re only at the beginning of the cross-pollination between games and neuroscience. Games are helping us unravel things we didn’t know about the brain, from disorders like addiction and amnesia to the processing of pain and visual information. Games are tackling some of the pressing medical issues of our time, including physical rehabilitation and the challenges of an aging population. They’re also teaching us about the way we feel rewarded, and even how we define our sense of self. And as far as neuroscience being on the brink of all its great discoveries, if you ask me, I think Max was right. (Source: Gamasutra)