Your brain on video games
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0:01 - 0:04I'm a brain scientist, and as a brain scientist,
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0:04 - 0:07I'm actually interested in how the brain learns,
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0:07 - 0:10and I'm especially interested in a possibility of
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0:10 - 0:15making our brains smarter, better and faster.
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0:15 - 0:18This is in this context I'm going to tell you
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0:18 - 0:20about video games. When we say video games,
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0:20 - 0:23most of you think about children.
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0:23 - 0:27It's true. Ninety percent of children do play video games.
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0:27 - 0:30But let's be frank.
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0:30 - 0:35When the kids are in bed, who is in front of the PlayStation?
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0:35 - 0:41Most of you. The average age of a gamer is 33 years old,
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0:41 - 0:44not eight years old, and in fact, if we look
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0:44 - 0:48at the projected demographics of video game play,
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0:48 - 0:51the video game players of tomorrow are
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0:51 - 0:54older adults. (Laughter)
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0:54 - 0:58So video [gaming] is pervasive throughout our society.
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0:58 - 1:02It is clearly here to stay. It has an amazing impact
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1:02 - 1:06on our everyday life. Consider these statistics
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1:06 - 1:12released by Activision. After one month of release
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1:12 - 1:16of the game "Call Of Duty: Black Ops," it had been played
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1:16 - 1:19for 68,000 years
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1:19 - 1:21worldwide, right?
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1:21 - 1:24Would any of you complain if this was the case
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1:24 - 1:27about doing linear algebra?
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1:27 - 1:32So what we are asking in the lab is, how can we leverage that power?
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1:32 - 1:34Now I want to step back a bit.
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1:34 - 1:37I know most of you have had the experience of coming back
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1:37 - 1:42home and finding your kids playing these kinds of games.
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1:42 - 1:44(Shooting noises) The name of the game is to get
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1:44 - 1:47after your enemy zombie bad guys
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1:47 - 1:50before they get to you, right?
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1:50 - 1:53And I'm almost sure most of you have thought,
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1:53 - 1:57"Oh, come on, can't you do something more intelligent
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1:57 - 2:00than shooting at zombies?"
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2:00 - 2:04I'd like you to put this kind of knee-jerk reaction
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2:04 - 2:06in the context of what you would have thought
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2:06 - 2:10if you had found your girl playing sudoku
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2:10 - 2:14or your boy reading Shakespeare. Right?
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2:14 - 2:17Most parents would find that great.
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2:17 - 2:20Well, I'm not going to tell you that playing video games
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2:20 - 2:23days in and days out is actually good for your health.
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2:23 - 2:26It's not, and binging is never good.
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2:26 - 2:30But I'm going to argue that in reasonable doses,
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2:30 - 2:33actually the very game I showed you at the beginning,
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2:33 - 2:36those action-packed shooter games
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2:36 - 2:39have quite powerful effects and positive effects
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2:39 - 2:43on many different aspects of our behavior.
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2:43 - 2:47There's not one week that goes without some major
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2:47 - 2:50headlines in the media about whether video games are
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2:50 - 2:54good or bad for you, right? You're all bombarded with that.
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2:54 - 3:00I'd like to put this kind of Friday night bar discussion aside
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3:00 - 3:03and get you to actually step into the lab.
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3:03 - 3:06What we do in the lab is actually measure directly,
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3:06 - 3:09in a quantitative fashion, what is the impact
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3:09 - 3:12of video games on the brain.
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3:12 - 3:15And so I'm going to take a few examples from our work.
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3:15 - 3:18One first saying that I'm sure you all have heard
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3:18 - 3:20is the fact that too much screen time
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3:20 - 3:23makes your eyesight worse.
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3:23 - 3:25That's a statement about vision.
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3:25 - 3:27There may be vision scientists among you.
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3:27 - 3:30We actually know how to test that statement.
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3:30 - 3:34We can step into the lab and measure how good your vision is.
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3:34 - 3:37Well, guess what? People that don't play a lot
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3:37 - 3:40of action games, that don't actually spend a lot of time
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3:40 - 3:44in front of screens, have normal, or what we call
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3:44 - 3:47corrective-to-normal vision. That's okay.
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3:47 - 3:49The issue is what happens with these guys that actually
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3:49 - 3:52indulge into playing video games like five hours per week,
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3:52 - 3:5410 hours per week, 15 hours per week.
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3:54 - 3:57By that statement, their vision should be really bad, right?
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3:57 - 4:00Guess what? Their vision is really, really good.
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4:00 - 4:03It's better than those that don't play.
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4:03 - 4:05And it's better in two different ways.
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4:05 - 4:07The first way is that they're actually able to resolve
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4:07 - 4:11small detail in the context of clutter, and though that means
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4:11 - 4:14being able to read the fine print on a prescription
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4:14 - 4:19rather than using magnifier glasses, you can actually do it
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4:19 - 4:21with just your eyesight.
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4:21 - 4:23The other way that they are better is actually being able
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4:23 - 4:26to resolve different levels of gray.
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4:26 - 4:29Imagine you're driving in a fog. That makes a difference
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4:29 - 4:32between seeing the car in front of you
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4:32 - 4:36and avoiding the accident, or getting into an accident.
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4:36 - 4:39So we're actually leveraging that work to develop games
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4:39 - 4:43for patients with low vision, and to have an impact
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4:43 - 4:46on retraining their brain to see better.
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4:46 - 4:50Clearly, when it comes to action video games,
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4:50 - 4:53screen time doesn't make your eyesight worse.
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4:53 - 4:57Another saying that I'm sure you have all heard around:
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4:57 - 5:01Video games lead to attention problems and greater distractability.
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5:01 - 5:05Okay, we know how to measure attention in the lab.
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5:05 - 5:09I'm actually going to give you an example of how we do so.
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5:09 - 5:12I'm going to ask you to participate, so you're going to have
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5:12 - 5:15to actually play the game with me. I'm going to show you
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5:15 - 5:20colored words. I want you to shout out the color of the ink.
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5:20 - 5:23Right? So this is the first example.
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5:23 - 5:25["Chair"]
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5:25 - 5:28Orange, good. ["Table"] Green.
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5:28 - 5:29["Board"] Audience: Red.
Daphne Bavelier: Red. -
5:29 - 5:30["Horse"] DB: Yellow. Audience: Yellow.
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5:30 - 5:32["Yellow"] DB: Red. Audience: Yellow.
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5:32 - 5:33["Blue"] DB: Yellow.
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5:33 - 5:39Okay, you get my point, right? (Laughter)
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5:39 - 5:43You're getting better, but it's hard. Why is it hard?
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5:43 - 5:47Because I introduced a conflict between
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5:47 - 5:50the word itself and its color.
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5:50 - 5:53How good your attention is determines actually how fast
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5:53 - 5:55you resolve that conflict, so the young guys here
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5:55 - 5:58at the top of their game probably, like, did a little better
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5:58 - 6:00than some of us that are older.
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6:00 - 6:03What we can show is that when you do this kind of task
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6:03 - 6:05with people that play a lot of action games,
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6:05 - 6:08they actually resolve the conflict faster.
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6:08 - 6:11So clearly playing those action games doesn't lead
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6:11 - 6:14to attention problems.
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6:14 - 6:16Actually, those action video game players have
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6:16 - 6:18many other advantages in terms of attention, and one
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6:18 - 6:21aspect of attention which is also improved for the better
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6:21 - 6:26is our ability to track objects around in the world.
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6:26 - 6:28This is something we use all the time. When you're driving,
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6:28 - 6:31you're tracking, keeping track of the cars around you.
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6:31 - 6:34You're also keeping track of the pedestrian, the running dog,
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6:34 - 6:37and that's how you can actually be safe driving, right?
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6:37 - 6:40In the lab, we get people to come to the lab,
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6:40 - 6:43sit in front of a computer screen, and we give them
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6:43 - 6:45little tasks that I'm going to get you to do again.
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6:45 - 6:48You're going to see yellow happy faces
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6:48 - 6:52and a few sad blue faces. These are children
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6:52 - 6:56in the schoolyard in Geneva during a recess
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6:56 - 7:00during the winter. Most kids are happy. It's actually recess.
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7:00 - 7:03But a few kids are sad and blue because they've forgotten their coat.
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7:03 - 7:07Everybody begins to move around, and your task
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7:07 - 7:10is to keep track of who had a coat at the beginning
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7:10 - 7:12and who didn't. So I'm just going to show you an example
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7:12 - 7:15where there is only one sad kid. It's easy because you can
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7:15 - 7:18actually track it with your eyes. You can track,
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7:18 - 7:20you can track, and then when it stops, and there is
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7:20 - 7:24a question mark, and I ask you, did this kid have a coat or not?
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7:24 - 7:27Was it yellow initially or blue?
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7:27 - 7:30I hear a few yellow. Good. So most of you have a brain. (Laughter)
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7:30 - 7:35I'm now going to ask you to do the task, but now with
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7:35 - 7:37a little more challenging task. There are going to be
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7:37 - 7:40three of them that are blue. Don't move your eyes.
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7:40 - 7:43Please don't move your eyes. Keep your eyes fixated
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7:43 - 7:45and expand, pull your attention. That's the only way
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7:45 - 7:48you can actually do it. If you move your eyes, you're doomed.
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7:48 - 7:50Yellow or blue?
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7:50 - 7:51Audience: Yellow.
DB: Good. -
7:51 - 7:54So your typical normal young adult
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7:54 - 7:57can have a span of about three or four objects of attention.
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7:57 - 8:00That's what we just did. Your action video game player
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8:00 - 8:03has a span of about six to seven objects of attention,
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8:03 - 8:06which is what is shown in this video here.
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8:06 - 8:10That's for you guys, action video game players.
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8:10 - 8:12A bit more challenging, right? (Laughter)
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8:12 - 8:15Yellow or blue? Blue. We have some people
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8:15 - 8:19that are serious out there. Yeah. (Laughter)
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8:19 - 8:22Good. So in the same way that we actually see
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8:22 - 8:26the effects of video games on people's behavior,
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8:26 - 8:29we can use brain imaging and look at the impact
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8:29 - 8:33of video games on the brain, and we do find many changes,
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8:33 - 8:36but the main changes are actually to the brain networks
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8:36 - 8:41that control attention. So one part is the parietal cortex
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8:41 - 8:44which is very well known to control the orientation of attention.
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8:44 - 8:47The other one is the frontal lobe, which controls
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8:47 - 8:49how we sustain attention, and another one
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8:49 - 8:52is the anterior cingulate, which controls how we allocate
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8:52 - 8:55and regulate attention and resolve conflict.
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8:55 - 8:58Now, when we do brain imaging, we find that all three
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8:58 - 9:01of these networks are actually much more efficient
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9:01 - 9:04in people that play action games.
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9:04 - 9:09This actually leads me to a rather counterintuitive finding
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9:09 - 9:12in the literature about technology and the brain.
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9:12 - 9:17You all know about multitasking. You all have been faulty
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9:17 - 9:19of multitasking when you're driving
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9:19 - 9:24and you pick up your cellphone. Bad idea. Very bad idea.
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9:24 - 9:28Why? Because as your attention shifts to your cell phone,
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9:28 - 9:32you are actually losing the capacity to react swiftly
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9:32 - 9:34to the car braking in front of you, and so you're
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9:34 - 9:40much more likely to get engaged into a car accident.
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9:40 - 9:43Now, we can measure that kind of skills in the lab.
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9:43 - 9:45We obviously don't ask people to drive around and see
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9:45 - 9:48how many car accidents they have. That would be a little
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9:48 - 9:51costly proposition. But we design tasks on the computer
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9:51 - 9:54where we can measure, to millisecond accuracy,
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9:54 - 9:59how good they are at switching from one task to another.
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9:59 - 10:01When we do that, we actually find that people
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10:01 - 10:04that play a lot of action games are really, really good.
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10:04 - 10:09They switch really fast, very swiftly. They pay a very small cost.
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10:09 - 10:12Now I'd like you to remember that result, and put it
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10:12 - 10:15in the context of another group of technology users,
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10:15 - 10:18a group which is actually much revered by society,
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10:18 - 10:22which are people that engage in multimedia-tasking.
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10:22 - 10:26What is multimedia-tasking? It's the fact that most of us,
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10:26 - 10:29most of our children, are engaged with listening to music
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10:29 - 10:32at the same time as they're doing search on the web
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10:32 - 10:35at the same time as they're chatting on Facebook with their friends.
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10:35 - 10:38That's a multimedia-tasker.
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10:38 - 10:41There was a first study done by colleagues at Stanford
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10:41 - 10:44and that we replicated that showed that
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10:44 - 10:48those people that identify as being high multimedia-taskers
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10:48 - 10:52are absolutely abysmal at multitasking.
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10:52 - 10:55When we measure them in the lab, they're really bad.
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10:55 - 10:58Right? So these kinds of results really
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10:58 - 11:00makes two main points.
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11:00 - 11:03The first one is that not all media are created equal.
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11:03 - 11:08You can't compare the effect of multimedia-tasking
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11:08 - 11:10and the effect of playing action games. They have
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11:10 - 11:13totally different effects on different aspects of cognition,
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11:13 - 11:16perception and attention.
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11:16 - 11:19Even within video games, I'm telling you right now
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11:19 - 11:21about these action-packed video games.
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11:21 - 11:24Different video games have a different effect on your brains.
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11:24 - 11:27So we actually need to step into the lab and really measure
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11:27 - 11:29what is the effect of each video game.
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11:29 - 11:34The other lesson is that general wisdom carries no weight.
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11:34 - 11:37I showed that to you already, like we looked at the fact that
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11:37 - 11:39despite a lot of screen time, those action gamers
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11:39 - 11:43have a lot of very good vision, etc.
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11:43 - 11:47Here, what was really striking is that these undergraduates
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11:47 - 11:50that actually report engaging in a lot of high
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11:50 - 11:55multimedia-tasking are convinced they aced the test.
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11:55 - 11:57So you show them their data, you show them they are bad
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11:57 - 12:00and they're like, "Not possible." You know, they have
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12:00 - 12:04this sort of gut feeling that, really, they are doing really, really good.
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12:04 - 12:07That's another argument for why we need to step into the lab
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12:07 - 12:10and really measure the impact of technology on the brain.
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12:10 - 12:15Now in a sense, when we think about the effect
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12:15 - 12:17of video games on the brain, it's very similar
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12:17 - 12:21to the effect of wine on the health.
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12:21 - 12:24There are some very poor uses of wine. There are some
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12:24 - 12:28very poor uses of video games. But when consumed
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12:28 - 12:32in reasonable doses, and at the right age,
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12:32 - 12:35wine can be very good for health. There are actually
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12:35 - 12:38specific molecules that have been identified
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12:38 - 12:44in red wine as leading to greater life expectancy.
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12:44 - 12:47So it's the same way, like those action video games
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12:47 - 12:49have a number of ingredients that are actually really
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12:49 - 12:53powerful for brain plasticity, learning, attention,
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12:53 - 12:57vision, etc., and so we need and we're working on
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12:57 - 12:59understanding what are those active ingredients so that
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12:59 - 13:03we can really then leverage them to deliver better games,
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13:03 - 13:08either for education or for rehabilitation of patients.
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13:08 - 13:11Now because we are interested in having an impact
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13:11 - 13:14for education or rehabilitation of patients, we are actually
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13:14 - 13:17not that interested in how those of you that choose
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13:17 - 13:21to play video games for many hours on end perform.
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13:21 - 13:25I'm much more interested in taking any of you
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13:25 - 13:29and showing that by forcing you to play an action game,
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13:29 - 13:32I can actually change your vision for the better,
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13:32 - 13:34whether you want to play that action game or not, right?
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13:34 - 13:36That's the point of rehabilitation or education.
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13:36 - 13:38Most of the kids don't go to school saying,
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13:38 - 13:41"Great, two hours of math!"
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13:41 - 13:45So that's really the crux of the research, and to do that,
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13:45 - 13:48we need to go one more step.
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13:48 - 13:51And one more step is to do training studies.
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13:51 - 13:54So let me illustrate that step with
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13:54 - 13:58a task which is called mental rotation.
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13:58 - 14:02Mental rotation is a task where I'm going to ask you,
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14:02 - 14:04and again you're going to do the task,
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14:04 - 14:08to look at this shape. Study it, it's a target shape,
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14:08 - 14:11and I'm going to present to you four different shapes.
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14:11 - 14:14One of these four different shapes is actually a rotated
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14:14 - 14:18version of this shape. I want you to tell me which one:
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14:18 - 14:23the first one, second one, third one or fourth one?
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14:23 - 14:25Okay, I'll help you. Fourth one.
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14:25 - 14:30One more. Get those brains working. Come on.
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14:30 - 14:35That's our target shape.
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14:35 - 14:39Third. Good! This is hard, right?
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14:39 - 14:40Like, the reason that I asked you to do that is because
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14:40 - 14:43you really feel your brain cringing, right?
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14:43 - 14:46It doesn't really feel like playing mindless action video games.
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14:46 - 14:49Well, what we do in these training studies is, people
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14:49 - 14:52come to the lab, they do tasks like this one,
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14:52 - 14:56we then force them to play 10 hours of action games.
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14:56 - 14:59They don't play 10 hours of action games in a row.
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14:59 - 15:02They do distributed practice, so little shots of 40 minutes
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15:02 - 15:06several days over a period of two weeks.
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15:06 - 15:08Then, once they are done with the training, they come back
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15:08 - 15:12a few days later and they are tested again on a similar type
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15:12 - 15:15of mental rotation task. So this is work from a colleague
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15:15 - 15:18in Toronto. What they showed is that, initially,
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15:18 - 15:20you know, subjects perform where they are expected
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15:20 - 15:25to perform given their age. After two weeks of training
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15:25 - 15:29on action video games, they actually perform better,
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15:29 - 15:35and the improvement is still there five months after
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15:35 - 15:37having done the training. That's really, really important.
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15:37 - 15:40Why? Because I told you we want to use these games
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15:40 - 15:43for education or for rehabilitation. We need to have effects
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15:43 - 15:46that are going to be long-lasting.
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15:46 - 15:49Now, at this point, a number of you are probably wondering
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15:49 - 15:53well, what are you waiting for, to put on the market
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15:53 - 15:55a game that would be good for the attention
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15:55 - 15:59of my grandmother and that she would actually enjoy,
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15:59 - 16:01or a game that would be great to rehabilitate the vision
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16:01 - 16:05of my grandson who has amblyopia, for example?
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16:05 - 16:09Well, we're working on it, but here is a challenge.
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16:09 - 16:11There are brain scientists like me that are beginning
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16:11 - 16:15to understand what are the good ingredients in games
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16:15 - 16:18to promote positive effects, and that's what I'm going
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16:18 - 16:21to call the broccoli side of the equation.
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16:21 - 16:25There is an entertainment software industry
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16:25 - 16:29which is extremely deft at coming up with
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16:29 - 16:33appealing products that you can't resist.
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16:33 - 16:36That's the chocolate side of the equation.
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16:36 - 16:39The issue is we need to put the two together,
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16:39 - 16:41and it's a little bit like with food.
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16:41 - 16:45Who really wants to eat chocolate-covered broccoli?
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16:45 - 16:47None of you. (Laughter) And you probably have had
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16:47 - 16:50that feeling, right, picking up an education game
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16:50 - 16:53and sort of feeling, hmm, you know, it's not really fun,
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16:53 - 16:55it's not really engaging. So what we need
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16:55 - 16:59is really a new brand of chocolate, a brand of chocolate
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16:59 - 17:03that is irresistible, that you really want to play,
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17:03 - 17:06but that has all the ingredients, the good ingredients
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17:06 - 17:09that are extracted from the broccoli that you can't recognize
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17:09 - 17:12but are still working on your brains. And we're working on it,
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17:12 - 17:16but it takes brain scientists to come and to get together,
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17:16 - 17:19people that work in the entertainment software industry,
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17:19 - 17:22and publishers, so these are not people that usually
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17:22 - 17:24meet every day, but it's actually doable,
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17:24 - 17:27and we are on the right track.
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17:27 - 17:29I'd like to leave you with that thought,
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17:29 - 17:32and thank you for your attention. (Applause)
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17:32 - 17:36(Applause)
- Title:
- Your brain on video games
- Speaker:
- Daphne Bavelier
- Description:
-
How do fast-paced video games affect the brain? Step into the lab with cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier to hear surprising news about how video games, even action-packed shooter games, can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask. (Filmed at TEDxCHUV.)
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 17:57
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Margarida Ferreira
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