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I'm a brain scientist, and as a brain scientist,

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I'm actually interested in how the brain learns,

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and I'm especially interested in a possibility of

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making our brains smarter, better and faster.

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This is in this context I'm going to tell you

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about video games. When we say video games,

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most of you think about children.

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It's true. Ninety percent of children do play video games.

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But let's be frank.

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When the kids are in bed, who is in front of the PlayStation?

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Most of you. The average age of a gamer is 33 years old,

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not eight years old, and in fact, if we look

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at the projected demographics of video game play,

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the video game players of tomorrow are

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older adults. (Laughter)

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So video [gaming] is pervasive throughout our society.

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It is clearly here to stay. It has an amazing impact

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on our everyday life. Consider these statistics

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released by Activision. After one month of release

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of the game "Call Of Duty: Black Ops," it had been played

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for 68,000 years

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worldwide, right?

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Would any of you complain if this was the case

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about doing linear algebra?

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So what we are asking in the lab is, how can we leverage that power?

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Now I want to step back a bit.

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I know most of you have had the experience of coming back

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home and finding your kids playing these kinds of games.

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(Shooting noises) The name of the game is to get

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after your enemy zombie bad guys

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before they get to you, right?

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And I'm almost sure most of you have thought,

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"Oh, come on, can't you do something more intelligent

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than shooting at zombies?"

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I'd like you to put this kind of knee-jerk reaction

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in the context of what you would have thought

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if you had found your girl playing sudoku

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or your boy reading Shakespeare. Right?

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Most parents would find that great.

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Well, I'm not going to tell you that playing video games

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days in and days out is actually good for your health.

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It's not, and binging is never good.

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But I'm going to argue that in reasonable doses,

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actually the very game I showed you at the beginning,

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those action-packed shooter games

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have quite powerful effects and positive effects

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on many different aspects of our behavior.

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There's not one week that goes without some major

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headlines in the media about whether video games are

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good or bad for you, right? You're all bombarded with that.

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I'd like to put this kind of Friday night bar discussion aside

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and get you to actually step into the lab.

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What we do in the lab is actually measure directly,

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in a quantitative fashion, what is the impact

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of video games on the brain.

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And so I'm going to take a few examples from our work.

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One first saying that I'm sure you all have heard

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is the fact that too much screen time

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makes your eyesight worse.

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That's a statement about vision.

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There may be vision scientists among you.

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We actually know how to test that statement.

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We can step into the lab and measure how good your vision is.

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Well, guess what? People that don't play a lot

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of action games, that don't actually spend a lot of time

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in front of screens, have normal, or what we call

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corrective-to-normal vision. That's okay.

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The issue is what happens with these guys that actually

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indulge into playing video games like five hours per week,

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10 hours per week, 15 hours per week.

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By that statement, their vision should be really bad, right?

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Guess what? Their vision is really, really good.

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It's better than those that don't play.

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And it's better in two different ways.

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The first way is that they're actually able to resolve

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small detail in the context of clutter, and though that means

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being able to read the fine print on a prescription

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rather than using magnifier glasses, you can actually do it

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with just your eyesight.

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The other way that they are better is actually being able

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to resolve different levels of gray.

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Imagine you're driving in a fog. That makes a difference

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between seeing the car in front of you

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and avoiding the accident, or getting into an accident.

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So we're actually leveraging that work to develop games

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for patients with low vision, and to have an impact

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on retraining their brain to see better.

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Clearly, when it comes to action video games,

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screen time doesn't make your eyesight worse.

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Another saying that I'm sure you have all heard around:

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Video games lead to attention problems and greater distractability.

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Okay, we know how to measure attention in the lab.

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I'm actually going to give you an example of how we do so.

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I'm going to ask you to participate, so you're going to have

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to actually play the game with me. I'm going to show you

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colored words. I want you to shout out the color of the ink.

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Right? So this is the first example.

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["Chair"]

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Orange, good. ["Table"] Green.

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["Board"] Audience: Red.Daphne Bavelier: Red.

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["Horse"] DB: Yellow. Audience: Yellow.

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["Yellow"] DB: Red. Audience: Yellow.

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["Blue"] DB: Yellow.

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Okay, you get my point, right? (Laughter)

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You're getting better, but it's hard. Why is it hard?

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Because I introduced a conflict between

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the word itself and its color.

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How good your attention is determines actually how fast

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you resolve that conflict, so the young guys here

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at the top of their game probably, like, did a little better

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than some of us that are older.

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What we can show is that when you do this kind of task

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with people that play a lot of action games,

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they actually resolve the conflict faster.

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So clearly playing those action games doesn't lead

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to attention problems.

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Actually, those action video game players have

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many other advantages in terms of attention, and one

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aspect of attention which is also improved for the better

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is our ability to track objects around in the world.

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This is something we use all the time. When you're driving,

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you're tracking, keeping track of the cars around you.

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You're also keeping track of the pedestrian, the running dog,

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and that's how you can actually be safe driving, right?

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In the lab, we get people to come to the lab,

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sit in front of a computer screen, and we give them

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little tasks that I'm going to get you to do again.

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You're going to see yellow happy faces

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and a few sad blue faces. These are children

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in the schoolyard in Geneva during a recess

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during the winter. Most kids are happy. It's actually recess.

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But a few kids are sad and blue because they've forgotten their coat.

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Everybody begins to move around, and your task

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is to keep track of who had a coat at the beginning

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and who didn't. So I'm just going to show you an example

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where there is only one sad kid. It's easy because you can

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actually track it with your eyes. You can track,

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you can track, and then when it stops, and there is

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a question mark, and I ask you, did this kid have a coat or not?

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Was it yellow initially or blue?

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I hear a few yellow. Good. So most of you have a brain. (Laughter)

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I'm now going to ask you to do the task, but now with

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a little more challenging task. There are going to be

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three of them that are blue. Don't move your eyes.

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Please don't move your eyes. Keep your eyes fixated

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and expand, pull your attention. That's the only way

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you can actually do it. If you move your eyes, you're doomed.

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Yellow or blue?

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Audience: Yellow.DB: Good.

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So your typical normal young adult

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can have a span of about three or four objects of attention.

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That's what we just did. Your action video game player

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has a span of about six to seven objects of attention,

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which is what is shown in this video here.

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That's for you guys, action video game players.

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A bit more challenging, right? (Laughter)

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Yellow or blue? Blue. We have some people

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that are serious out there. Yeah. (Laughter)

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Good. So in the same way that we actually see

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the effects of video games on people's behavior,

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we can use brain imaging and look at the impact

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of video games on the brain, and we do find many changes,

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but the main changes are actually to the brain networks

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that control attention. So one part is the parietal cortex

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which is very well known to control the orientation of attention.

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The other one is the frontal lobe, which controls

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how we sustain attention, and another one

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is the anterior cingulate, which controls how we allocate

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and regulate attention and resolve conflict.

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Now, when we do brain imaging, we find that all three

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of these networks are actually much more efficient

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in people that play action games.

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This actually leads me to a rather counterintuitive finding

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in the literature about technology and the brain.

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You all know about multitasking. You all have been faulty

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of multitasking when you're driving

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and you pick up your cellphone. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

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Why? Because as your attention shifts to your cell phone,

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you are actually losing the capacity to react swiftly

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to the car braking in front of you, and so you're

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much more likely to get engaged into a car accident.

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Now, we can measure that kind of skills in the lab.

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We obviously don't ask people to drive around and see

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how many car accidents they have. That would be a little

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costly proposition. But we design tasks on the computer

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where we can measure, to millisecond accuracy,

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how good they are at switching from one task to another.

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When we do that, we actually find that people

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that play a lot of action games are really, really good.

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They switch really fast, very swiftly. They pay a very small cost.

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Now I'd like you to remember that result, and put it

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in the context of another group of technology users,

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a group which is actually much revered by society,

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which are people that engage in multimedia-tasking.

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What is multimedia-tasking? It's the fact that most of us,

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most of our children, are engaged with listening to music

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at the same time as they're doing search on the web

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at the same time as they're chatting on Facebook with their friends.

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That's a multimedia-tasker.

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There was a first study done by colleagues at Stanford

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and that we replicated that showed that

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those people that identify as being high multimedia-taskers

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are absolutely abysmal at multitasking.

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When we measure them in the lab, they're really bad.

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Right? So these kinds of results really

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makes two main points.

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The first one is that not all media are created equal.

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You can't compare the effect of multimedia-tasking

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and the effect of playing action games. They have

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totally different effects on different aspects of cognition,

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perception and attention.

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Even within video games, I'm telling you right now

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about these action-packed video games.

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Different video games have a different effect on your brains.

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So we actually need to step into the lab and really measure

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what is the effect of each video game.

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The other lesson is that general wisdom carries no weight.

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I showed that to you already, like we looked at the fact that

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despite a lot of screen time, those action gamers

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have a lot of very good vision, etc.

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Here, what was really striking is that these undergraduates

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that actually report engaging in a lot of high

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multimedia-tasking are convinced they aced the test.

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So you show them their data, you show them they are bad

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and they're like, "Not possible." You know, they have

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this sort of gut feeling that, really, they are doing really, really good.

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That's another argument for why we need to step into the lab

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and really measure the impact of technology on the brain.

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Now in a sense, when we think about the effect

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of video games on the brain, it's very similar

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to the effect of wine on the health.

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There are some very poor uses of wine. There are some

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very poor uses of video games. But when consumed

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in reasonable doses, and at the right age,

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wine can be very good for health. There are actually

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specific molecules that have been identified

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in red wine as leading to greater life expectancy.

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So it's the same way, like those action video games

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have a number of ingredients that are actually really

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powerful for brain plasticity, learning, attention,

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vision, etc., and so we need and we're working on

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understanding what are those active ingredients so that

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we can really then leverage them to deliver better games,

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either for education or for rehabilitation of patients.

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Now because we are interested in having an impact

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for education or rehabilitation of patients, we are actually

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not that interested in how those of you that choose

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to play video games for many hours on end perform.

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I'm much more interested in taking any of you

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and showing that by forcing you to play an action game,

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I can actually change your vision for the better,

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whether you want to play that action game or not, right?

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That's the point of rehabilitation or education.

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Most of the kids don't go to school saying,

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"Great, two hours of math!"

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So that's really the crux of the research, and to do that,

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we need to go one more step.

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And one more step is to do training studies.

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So let me illustrate that step with

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a task which is called mental rotation.

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Mental rotation is a task where I'm going to ask you,

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and again you're going to do the task,

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to look at this shape. Study it, it's a target shape,

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and I'm going to present to you four different shapes.

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One of these four different shapes is actually a rotated

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version of this shape. I want you to tell me which one:

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the first one, second one, third one or fourth one?

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Okay, I'll help you. Fourth one.

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One more. Get those brains working. Come on.

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That's our target shape.

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Third. Good! This is hard, right?

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Like, the reason that I asked you to do that is because

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you really feel your brain cringing, right?

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It doesn't really feel like playing mindless action video games.

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Well, what we do in these training studies is, people

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come to the lab, they do tasks like this one,

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we then force them to play 10 hours of action games.

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They don't play 10 hours of action games in a row.

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They do distributed practice, so little shots of 40 minutes

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several days over a period of two weeks.

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Then, once they are done with the training, they come back

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a few days later and they are tested again on a similar type

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of mental rotation task. So this is work from a colleague

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in Toronto. What they showed is that, initially,

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you know, subjects perform where they are expected

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to perform given their age. After two weeks of training

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on action video games, they actually perform better,

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and the improvement is still there five months after

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having done the training. That's really, really important.

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Why? Because I told you we want to use these games

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for education or for rehabilitation. We need to have effects

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that are going to be long-lasting.

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Now, at this point, a number of you are probably wondering

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well, what are you waiting for, to put on the market

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a game that would be good for the attention

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of my grandmother and that she would actually enjoy,

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or a game that would be great to rehabilitate the vision

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of my grandson who has amblyopia, for example?

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Well, we're working on it, but here is a challenge.

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There are brain scientists like me that are beginning

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to understand what are the good ingredients in games

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to promote positive effects, and that's what I'm going

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to call the broccoli side of the equation.

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There is an entertainment software industry

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which is extremely deft at coming up with

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appealing products that you can't resist.

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That's the chocolate side of the equation.

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The issue is we need to put the two together,

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and it's a little bit like with food.

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Who really wants to eat chocolate-covered broccoli?

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None of you. (Laughter) And you probably have had

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that feeling, right, picking up an education game

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and sort of feeling, hmm, you know, it's not really fun,

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it's not really engaging. So what we need

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is really a new brand of chocolate, a brand of chocolate

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that is irresistible, that you really want to play,

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but that has all the ingredients, the good ingredients

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that are extracted from the broccoli that you can't recognize

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but are still working on your brains. And we're working on it,

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but it takes brain scientists to come and to get together,

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people that work in the entertainment software industry,

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and publishers, so these are not people that usually

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meet every day, but it's actually doable,

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and we are on the right track.

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I'd like to leave you with that thought,

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and thank you for your attention. (Applause)

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(Applause)