Playing video games like Call of Duty for longer periods of time on a daily basis will more likely cause more harm than good, according to research publshed by the Royal Society journal.
While there are benefits to spending hours on action or battle games, such as having better attention to detail and sharp observation skills, these are nothing compared to the possible bad effects they can cause on gamers.
The likelihood of players developing neurological disorders and mental illnesses are higher when teenagers and adults play more than 6 hours in a day. Some of these diseases include Alzheimer's, dementia, post-traumatic stress, schizophrenia and depression.
"For more than a decade now, research has demonstrated that action video game players display more efficient visual attention abilities, and our current study has once again confirmed this notion," according to Dr. Gregory West, a scientist from the University of Montreal.
"However, we also found that gamers rely on the caudate-nucleus to a greater degree than non-gamers. Past research has shown that people who rely on caudate nucleus-dependent strategies have lower grey matter and functional brain activity in the hippocampus," West added.
A group of 26 players and 33 non-players participated in the research, where their eye movements and brain activity were observed and recorded. They had to play a game where they would go through a virtual maze and tasked to recover certain objects.
Results showed that while navigating the course, gamers used 80.76% of their caudate nucleus while those who are not players who only utilized 42.42%. The research showed that non-gamers' hippocampus was more active, which is the brain's spatial memory system.
The caudate nucleus uses information from a person's past experiences to influence future functions and decisions. It has also been associated with alcohol and drug addiction.
Besides Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto V are among the popular game franchises mentioned in the study.
