0:00:00.578,0:00:03.675 I'm a brain scientist, and as a brain scientist, 0:00:03.675,0:00:06.747 I'm actually interested in how the brain learns, 0:00:06.747,0:00:10.114 and I'm especially interested in a possibility of 0:00:10.114,0:00:14.846 making our brains smarter, better and faster. 0:00:14.846,0:00:17.722 This is in this context I'm going to tell you 0:00:17.722,0:00:20.472 about video games. When we say video games, 0:00:20.472,0:00:23.010 most of you think about children. 0:00:23.010,0:00:26.988 It's true. Ninety percent of children do play video games. 0:00:26.988,0:00:29.906 But let's be frank. 0:00:29.906,0:00:34.695 When the kids are in bed, who is in front of the PlayStation? 0:00:34.695,0:00:41.179 Most of you. The average age of a gamer is 33 years old, 0:00:41.179,0:00:44.186 not eight years old, and in fact, if we look 0:00:44.186,0:00:47.895 at the projected demographics of video game play, 0:00:47.895,0:00:50.628 the video game players of tomorrow are 0:00:50.628,0:00:53.752 older adults. (Laughter) 0:00:53.752,0:00:58.003 So video [gaming] is pervasive throughout our society. 0:00:58.003,0:01:02.386 It is clearly here to stay. It has an amazing impact 0:01:02.386,0:01:05.773 on our everyday life. Consider these statistics 0:01:05.773,0:01:11.588 released by Activision. After one month of release 0:01:11.588,0:01:16.080 of the game "Call Of Duty: Black Ops," it had been played 0:01:16.080,0:01:19.453 for 68,000 years 0:01:19.453,0:01:21.319 worldwide, right? 0:01:21.319,0:01:24.266 Would any of you complain if this was the case 0:01:24.266,0:01:27.429 about doing linear algebra? 0:01:27.429,0:01:31.724 So what we are asking in the lab is, how can we leverage that power? 0:01:31.724,0:01:33.572 Now I want to step back a bit. 0:01:33.572,0:01:36.813 I know most of you have had the experience of coming back 0:01:36.813,0:01:41.533 home and finding your kids playing these kinds of games. 0:01:41.533,0:01:43.673 (Shooting noises) The name of the game is to get 0:01:43.673,0:01:46.637 after your enemy zombie bad guys 0:01:46.637,0:01:50.227 before they get to you, right? 0:01:50.227,0:01:53.404 And I'm almost sure most of you have thought, 0:01:53.404,0:01:56.725 "Oh, come on, can't you do something more intelligent 0:01:56.725,0:02:00.052 than shooting at zombies?" 0:02:00.052,0:02:03.518 I'd like you to put this kind of knee-jerk reaction 0:02:03.518,0:02:06.015 in the context of what you would have thought 0:02:06.015,0:02:09.524 if you had found your girl playing sudoku 0:02:09.524,0:02:13.875 or your boy reading Shakespeare. Right? 0:02:13.875,0:02:16.612 Most parents would find that great. 0:02:16.612,0:02:19.956 Well, I'm not going to tell you that playing video games 0:02:19.956,0:02:22.924 days in and days out is actually good for your health. 0:02:22.924,0:02:26.124 It's not, and binging is never good. 0:02:26.124,0:02:30.115 But I'm going to argue that in reasonable doses, 0:02:30.115,0:02:33.084 actually the very game I showed you at the beginning, 0:02:33.084,0:02:35.668 those action-packed shooter games 0:02:35.668,0:02:39.444 have quite powerful effects and positive effects 0:02:39.444,0:02:43.302 on many different aspects of our behavior. 0:02:43.302,0:02:46.997 There's not one week that goes without some major 0:02:46.997,0:02:49.773 headlines in the media about whether video games are 0:02:49.773,0:02:54.389 good or bad for you, right? You're all bombarded with that. 0:02:54.389,0:03:00.077 I'd like to put this kind of Friday night bar discussion aside 0:03:00.077,0:03:03.220 and get you to actually step into the lab. 0:03:03.220,0:03:06.093 What we do in the lab is actually measure directly, 0:03:06.093,0:03:08.860 in a quantitative fashion, what is the impact 0:03:08.860,0:03:11.629 of video games on the brain. 0:03:11.629,0:03:14.964 And so I'm going to take a few examples from our work. 0:03:14.964,0:03:17.563 One first saying that I'm sure you all have heard 0:03:17.563,0:03:19.849 is the fact that too much screen time 0:03:19.849,0:03:22.664 makes your eyesight worse. 0:03:22.664,0:03:24.867 That's a statement about vision. 0:03:24.867,0:03:27.403 There may be vision scientists among you. 0:03:27.403,0:03:30.342 We actually know how to test that statement. 0:03:30.342,0:03:33.779 We can step into the lab and measure how good your vision is. 0:03:33.779,0:03:37.460 Well, guess what? People that don't play a lot 0:03:37.460,0:03:40.450 of action games, that don't actually spend a lot of time 0:03:40.450,0:03:43.982 in front of screens, have normal, or what we call 0:03:43.982,0:03:46.636 corrective-to-normal vision. That's okay. 0:03:46.636,0:03:49.085 The issue is what happens with these guys that actually 0:03:49.085,0:03:52.365 indulge into playing video games like five hours per week, 0:03:52.365,0:03:54.240 10 hours per week, 15 hours per week. 0:03:54.240,0:03:57.468 By that statement, their vision should be really bad, right? 0:03:57.468,0:04:00.165 Guess what? Their vision is really, really good. 0:04:00.165,0:04:02.605 It's better than those that don't play. 0:04:02.605,0:04:04.877 And it's better in two different ways. 0:04:04.877,0:04:07.302 The first way is that they're actually able to resolve 0:04:07.302,0:04:10.557 small detail in the context of clutter, and though that means 0:04:10.557,0:04:14.355 being able to read the fine print on a prescription 0:04:14.355,0:04:18.982 rather than using magnifier glasses, you can actually do it 0:04:18.982,0:04:20.548 with just your eyesight. 0:04:20.548,0:04:23.364 The other way that they are better is actually being able 0:04:23.364,0:04:26.273 to resolve different levels of gray. 0:04:26.273,0:04:29.444 Imagine you're driving in a fog. That makes a difference 0:04:29.444,0:04:31.925 between seeing the car in front of you 0:04:31.925,0:04:35.668 and avoiding the accident, or getting into an accident. 0:04:35.668,0:04:38.684 So we're actually leveraging that work to develop games 0:04:38.684,0:04:43.158 for patients with low vision, and to have an impact 0:04:43.158,0:04:46.493 on retraining their brain to see better. 0:04:46.493,0:04:50.142 Clearly, when it comes to action video games, 0:04:50.142,0:04:53.037 screen time doesn't make your eyesight worse. 0:04:53.037,0:04:57.023 Another saying that I'm sure you have all heard around: 0:04:57.023,0:05:01.397 Video games lead to attention problems and greater distractability. 0:05:01.397,0:05:05.302 Okay, we know how to measure attention in the lab. 0:05:05.302,0:05:08.903 I'm actually going to give you an example of how we do so. 0:05:08.903,0:05:11.628 I'm going to ask you to participate, so you're going to have 0:05:11.628,0:05:14.652 to actually play the game with me. I'm going to show you 0:05:14.652,0:05:20.085 colored words. I want you to shout out the color of the ink. 0:05:20.085,0:05:23.468 Right? So this is the first example. 0:05:23.468,0:05:24.558 ["Chair"] 0:05:24.558,0:05:27.619 Orange, good. ["Table"] Green. 0:05:27.619,0:05:28.999 ["Board"] Audience: Red.Daphne Bavelier: Red. 0:05:28.999,0:05:30.293 ["Horse"] DB: Yellow. Audience: Yellow. 0:05:30.293,0:05:31.618 ["Yellow"] DB: Red. Audience: Yellow. 0:05:31.618,0:05:33.127 ["Blue"] DB: Yellow. 0:05:33.127,0:05:39.482 Okay, you get my point, right? (Laughter) 0:05:39.482,0:05:42.818 You're getting better, but it's hard. Why is it hard? 0:05:42.818,0:05:46.772 Because I introduced a conflict between 0:05:46.772,0:05:49.685 the word itself and its color. 0:05:49.685,0:05:52.724 How good your attention is determines actually how fast 0:05:52.724,0:05:55.251 you resolve that conflict, so the young guys here 0:05:55.251,0:05:57.812 at the top of their game probably, like, did a little better 0:05:57.812,0:06:00.356 than some of us that are older. 0:06:00.356,0:06:02.924 What we can show is that when you do this kind of task 0:06:02.924,0:06:04.524 with people that play a lot of action games, 0:06:04.524,0:06:07.844 they actually resolve the conflict faster. 0:06:07.844,0:06:11.052 So clearly playing those action games doesn't lead 0:06:11.052,0:06:13.535 to attention problems. 0:06:13.535,0:06:15.506 Actually, those action video game players have 0:06:15.506,0:06:17.823 many other advantages in terms of attention, and one 0:06:17.823,0:06:20.722 aspect of attention which is also improved for the better 0:06:20.722,0:06:25.500 is our ability to track objects around in the world. 0:06:25.500,0:06:28.044 This is something we use all the time. When you're driving, 0:06:28.044,0:06:31.292 you're tracking, keeping track of the cars around you. 0:06:31.292,0:06:34.367 You're also keeping track of the pedestrian, the running dog, 0:06:34.367,0:06:37.420 and that's how you can actually be safe driving, right? 0:06:37.420,0:06:40.484 In the lab, we get people to come to the lab, 0:06:40.484,0:06:42.564 sit in front of a computer screen, and we give them 0:06:42.564,0:06:45.460 little tasks that I'm going to get you to do again. 0:06:45.460,0:06:48.412 You're going to see yellow happy faces 0:06:48.412,0:06:52.228 and a few sad blue faces. These are children 0:06:52.228,0:06:56.048 in the schoolyard in Geneva during a recess 0:06:56.048,0:07:00.349 during the winter. Most kids are happy. It's actually recess. 0:07:00.349,0:07:03.476 But a few kids are sad and blue because they've forgotten their coat. 0:07:03.476,0:07:06.796 Everybody begins to move around, and your task 0:07:06.796,0:07:09.920 is to keep track of who had a coat at the beginning 0:07:09.920,0:07:12.411 and who didn't. So I'm just going to show you an example 0:07:12.411,0:07:15.240 where there is only one sad kid. It's easy because you can 0:07:15.240,0:07:17.577 actually track it with your eyes. You can track, 0:07:17.577,0:07:19.857 you can track, and then when it stops, and there is 0:07:19.857,0:07:23.788 a question mark, and I ask you, did this kid have a coat or not? 0:07:23.788,0:07:26.616 Was it yellow initially or blue? 0:07:26.616,0:07:30.413 I hear a few yellow. Good. So most of you have a brain. (Laughter) 0:07:30.413,0:07:35.209 I'm now going to ask you to do the task, but now with 0:07:35.209,0:07:37.297 a little more challenging task. There are going to be 0:07:37.297,0:07:40.480 three of them that are blue. Don't move your eyes. 0:07:40.480,0:07:42.733 Please don't move your eyes. Keep your eyes fixated 0:07:42.733,0:07:45.379 and expand, pull your attention. That's the only way 0:07:45.379,0:07:48.227 you can actually do it. If you move your eyes, you're doomed. 0:07:48.227,0:07:49.690 Yellow or blue? 0:07:49.690,0:07:51.336 Audience: Yellow.DB: Good. 0:07:51.336,0:07:53.839 So your typical normal young adult 0:07:53.839,0:07:57.475 can have a span of about three or four objects of attention. 0:07:57.475,0:08:00.235 That's what we just did. Your action video game player 0:08:00.235,0:08:03.435 has a span of about six to seven objects of attention, 0:08:03.435,0:08:06.413 which is what is shown in this video here. 0:08:06.413,0:08:09.889 That's for you guys, action video game players. 0:08:09.889,0:08:11.774 A bit more challenging, right? (Laughter) 0:08:11.774,0:08:15.482 Yellow or blue? Blue. We have some people 0:08:15.482,0:08:18.686 that are serious out there. Yeah. (Laughter) 0:08:18.686,0:08:22.290 Good. So in the same way that we actually see 0:08:22.290,0:08:25.768 the effects of video games on people's behavior, 0:08:25.768,0:08:28.833 we can use brain imaging and look at the impact 0:08:28.833,0:08:32.618 of video games on the brain, and we do find many changes, 0:08:32.618,0:08:35.978 but the main changes are actually to the brain networks 0:08:35.978,0:08:40.522 that control attention. So one part is the parietal cortex 0:08:40.522,0:08:44.241 which is very well known to control the orientation of attention. 0:08:44.241,0:08:46.674 The other one is the frontal lobe, which controls 0:08:46.674,0:08:49.384 how we sustain attention, and another one 0:08:49.384,0:08:51.953 is the anterior cingulate, which controls how we allocate 0:08:51.953,0:08:55.250 and regulate attention and resolve conflict. 0:08:55.250,0:08:58.114 Now, when we do brain imaging, we find that all three 0:08:58.114,0:09:01.458 of these networks are actually much more efficient 0:09:01.458,0:09:04.218 in people that play action games. 0:09:04.218,0:09:08.969 This actually leads me to a rather counterintuitive finding 0:09:08.969,0:09:12.410 in the literature about technology and the brain. 0:09:12.410,0:09:16.859 You all know about multitasking. You all have been faulty 0:09:16.859,0:09:19.069 of multitasking when you're driving 0:09:19.069,0:09:23.760 and you pick up your cellphone. Bad idea. Very bad idea. 0:09:23.760,0:09:27.663 Why? Because as your attention shifts to your cell phone, 0:09:27.663,0:09:31.811 you are actually losing the capacity to react swiftly 0:09:31.811,0:09:34.259 to the car braking in front of you, and so you're 0:09:34.259,0:09:39.830 much more likely to get engaged into a car accident. 0:09:39.830,0:09:42.706 Now, we can measure that kind of skills in the lab. 0:09:42.706,0:09:45.178 We obviously don't ask people to drive around and see 0:09:45.178,0:09:47.523 how many car accidents they have. That would be a little 0:09:47.523,0:09:51.070 costly proposition. But we design tasks on the computer 0:09:51.070,0:09:54.188 where we can measure, to millisecond accuracy, 0:09:54.188,0:09:58.716 how good they are at switching from one task to another. 0:09:58.716,0:10:01.284 When we do that, we actually find that people 0:10:01.284,0:10:04.368 that play a lot of action games are really, really good. 0:10:04.368,0:10:08.851 They switch really fast, very swiftly. They pay a very small cost. 0:10:08.851,0:10:11.509 Now I'd like you to remember that result, and put it 0:10:11.509,0:10:15.241 in the context of another group of technology users, 0:10:15.241,0:10:17.651 a group which is actually much revered by society, 0:10:17.651,0:10:22.190 which are people that engage in multimedia-tasking. 0:10:22.190,0:10:25.835 What is multimedia-tasking? It's the fact that most of us, 0:10:25.835,0:10:29.116 most of our children, are engaged with listening to music 0:10:29.116,0:10:31.863 at the same time as they're doing search on the web 0:10:31.863,0:10:35.220 at the same time as they're chatting on Facebook with their friends. 0:10:35.220,0:10:37.556 That's a multimedia-tasker. 0:10:37.556,0:10:41.116 There was a first study done by colleagues at Stanford 0:10:41.116,0:10:43.669 and that we replicated that showed that 0:10:43.669,0:10:48.316 those people that identify as being high multimedia-taskers 0:10:48.316,0:10:52.163 are absolutely abysmal at multitasking. 0:10:52.163,0:10:54.900 When we measure them in the lab, they're really bad. 0:10:54.900,0:10:57.606 Right? So these kinds of results really 0:10:57.606,0:11:00.092 makes two main points. 0:11:00.092,0:11:03.284 The first one is that not all media are created equal. 0:11:03.284,0:11:08.196 You can't compare the effect of multimedia-tasking 0:11:08.196,0:11:09.842 and the effect of playing action games. They have 0:11:09.842,0:11:13.234 totally different effects on different aspects of cognition, 0:11:13.234,0:11:16.348 perception and attention. 0:11:16.348,0:11:19.188 Even within video games, I'm telling you right now 0:11:19.188,0:11:20.941 about these action-packed video games. 0:11:20.941,0:11:24.275 Different video games have a different effect on your brains. 0:11:24.275,0:11:26.957 So we actually need to step into the lab and really measure 0:11:26.957,0:11:29.468 what is the effect of each video game. 0:11:29.468,0:11:33.755 The other lesson is that general wisdom carries no weight. 0:11:33.755,0:11:36.811 I showed that to you already, like we looked at the fact that 0:11:36.811,0:11:39.259 despite a lot of screen time, those action gamers 0:11:39.259,0:11:43.267 have a lot of very good vision, etc. 0:11:43.267,0:11:46.585 Here, what was really striking is that these undergraduates 0:11:46.585,0:11:49.826 that actually report engaging in a lot of high 0:11:49.826,0:11:54.803 multimedia-tasking are convinced they aced the test. 0:11:54.803,0:11:57.093 So you show them their data, you show them they are bad 0:11:57.093,0:11:59.779 and they're like, "Not possible." You know, they have 0:11:59.779,0:12:03.635 this sort of gut feeling that, really, they are doing really, really good. 0:12:03.635,0:12:06.580 That's another argument for why we need to step into the lab 0:12:06.580,0:12:10.172 and really measure the impact of technology on the brain. 0:12:10.172,0:12:14.755 Now in a sense, when we think about the effect 0:12:14.755,0:12:17.235 of video games on the brain, it's very similar 0:12:17.235,0:12:21.099 to the effect of wine on the health. 0:12:21.099,0:12:24.139 There are some very poor uses of wine. There are some 0:12:24.139,0:12:28.355 very poor uses of video games. But when consumed 0:12:28.355,0:12:31.836 in reasonable doses, and at the right age, 0:12:31.836,0:12:35.107 wine can be very good for health. There are actually 0:12:35.107,0:12:38.371 specific molecules that have been identified 0:12:38.371,0:12:44.203 in red wine as leading to greater life expectancy. 0:12:44.203,0:12:47.475 So it's the same way, like those action video games 0:12:47.475,0:12:49.137 have a number of ingredients that are actually really 0:12:49.137,0:12:53.107 powerful for brain plasticity, learning, attention, 0:12:53.107,0:12:56.712 vision, etc., and so we need and we're working on 0:12:56.712,0:12:59.467 understanding what are those active ingredients so that 0:12:59.467,0:13:03.357 we can really then leverage them to deliver better games, 0:13:03.357,0:13:07.600 either for education or for rehabilitation of patients. 0:13:07.600,0:13:11.379 Now because we are interested in having an impact 0:13:11.379,0:13:13.867 for education or rehabilitation of patients, we are actually 0:13:13.867,0:13:17.283 not that interested in how those of you that choose 0:13:17.283,0:13:21.155 to play video games for many hours on end perform. 0:13:21.155,0:13:24.980 I'm much more interested in taking any of you 0:13:24.980,0:13:28.760 and showing that by forcing you to play an action game, 0:13:28.760,0:13:31.623 I can actually change your vision for the better, 0:13:31.623,0:13:33.954 whether you want to play that action game or not, right? 0:13:33.954,0:13:36.370 That's the point of rehabilitation or education. 0:13:36.370,0:13:38.296 Most of the kids don't go to school saying, 0:13:38.296,0:13:41.036 "Great, two hours of math!" 0:13:41.036,0:13:45.475 So that's really the crux of the research, and to do that, 0:13:45.475,0:13:47.939 we need to go one more step. 0:13:47.939,0:13:50.963 And one more step is to do training studies. 0:13:50.963,0:13:54.363 So let me illustrate that step with 0:13:54.363,0:13:57.931 a task which is called mental rotation. 0:13:57.931,0:14:02.106 Mental rotation is a task where I'm going to ask you, 0:14:02.106,0:14:03.991 and again you're going to do the task, 0:14:03.991,0:14:07.676 to look at this shape. Study it, it's a target shape, 0:14:07.676,0:14:10.930 and I'm going to present to you four different shapes. 0:14:10.930,0:14:13.770 One of these four different shapes is actually a rotated 0:14:13.770,0:14:18.074 version of this shape. I want you to tell me which one: 0:14:18.074,0:14:22.915 the first one, second one, third one or fourth one? 0:14:22.915,0:14:25.332 Okay, I'll help you. Fourth one. 0:14:25.332,0:14:29.862 One more. Get those brains working. Come on. 0:14:29.862,0:14:34.836 That's our target shape. 0:14:34.836,0:14:38.539 Third. Good! This is hard, right? 0:14:38.539,0:14:40.026 Like, the reason that I asked you to do that is because 0:14:40.026,0:14:42.760 you really feel your brain cringing, right? 0:14:42.760,0:14:46.192 It doesn't really feel like playing mindless action video games. 0:14:46.192,0:14:48.897 Well, what we do in these training studies is, people 0:14:48.897,0:14:51.506 come to the lab, they do tasks like this one, 0:14:51.506,0:14:55.836 we then force them to play 10 hours of action games. 0:14:55.836,0:14:58.582 They don't play 10 hours of action games in a row. 0:14:58.582,0:15:01.692 They do distributed practice, so little shots of 40 minutes 0:15:01.692,0:15:05.993 several days over a period of two weeks. 0:15:05.993,0:15:07.789 Then, once they are done with the training, they come back 0:15:07.789,0:15:11.762 a few days later and they are tested again on a similar type 0:15:11.762,0:15:15.378 of mental rotation task. So this is work from a colleague 0:15:15.378,0:15:17.913 in Toronto. What they showed is that, initially, 0:15:17.913,0:15:20.111 you know, subjects perform where they are expected 0:15:20.111,0:15:25.321 to perform given their age. After two weeks of training 0:15:25.321,0:15:29.177 on action video games, they actually perform better, 0:15:29.177,0:15:34.533 and the improvement is still there five months after 0:15:34.533,0:15:37.401 having done the training. That's really, really important. 0:15:37.401,0:15:39.881 Why? Because I told you we want to use these games 0:15:39.881,0:15:43.081 for education or for rehabilitation. We need to have effects 0:15:43.081,0:15:46.017 that are going to be long-lasting. 0:15:46.017,0:15:48.870 Now, at this point, a number of you are probably wondering 0:15:48.870,0:15:52.503 well, what are you waiting for, to put on the market 0:15:52.503,0:15:55.055 a game that would be good for the attention 0:15:55.055,0:15:58.575 of my grandmother and that she would actually enjoy, 0:15:58.575,0:16:01.158 or a game that would be great to rehabilitate the vision 0:16:01.158,0:16:04.967 of my grandson who has amblyopia, for example? 0:16:04.967,0:16:09.447 Well, we're working on it, but here is a challenge. 0:16:09.447,0:16:11.358 There are brain scientists like me that are beginning 0:16:11.358,0:16:14.615 to understand what are the good ingredients in games 0:16:14.615,0:16:17.720 to promote positive effects, and that's what I'm going 0:16:17.720,0:16:21.294 to call the broccoli side of the equation. 0:16:21.294,0:16:25.030 There is an entertainment software industry 0:16:25.030,0:16:28.502 which is extremely deft at coming up with 0:16:28.502,0:16:32.646 appealing products that you can't resist. 0:16:32.646,0:16:36.174 That's the chocolate side of the equation. 0:16:36.174,0:16:39.198 The issue is we need to put the two together, 0:16:39.198,0:16:41.454 and it's a little bit like with food. 0:16:41.454,0:16:45.095 Who really wants to eat chocolate-covered broccoli? 0:16:45.095,0:16:47.354 None of you. (Laughter) And you probably have had 0:16:47.354,0:16:49.686 that feeling, right, picking up an education game 0:16:49.686,0:16:53.078 and sort of feeling, hmm, you know, it's not really fun, 0:16:53.078,0:16:55.495 it's not really engaging. So what we need 0:16:55.495,0:16:58.846 is really a new brand of chocolate, a brand of chocolate 0:16:58.846,0:17:02.857 that is irresistible, that you really want to play, 0:17:02.857,0:17:05.842 but that has all the ingredients, the good ingredients 0:17:05.842,0:17:09.070 that are extracted from the broccoli that you can't recognize 0:17:09.070,0:17:11.909 but are still working on your brains. And we're working on it, 0:17:11.909,0:17:16.385 but it takes brain scientists to come and to get together, 0:17:16.385,0:17:19.348 people that work in the entertainment software industry, 0:17:19.348,0:17:22.086 and publishers, so these are not people that usually 0:17:22.086,0:17:24.423 meet every day, but it's actually doable, 0:17:24.423,0:17:27.070 and we are on the right track. 0:17:27.070,0:17:28.852 I'd like to leave you with that thought, 0:17:28.852,0:17:32.219 and thank you for your attention. (Applause) 0:17:32.219,0:17:36.219 (Applause)