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Family
Are Violent Video Games Hurting Your Child's
Brain?
By Laura Ramirez
As a caring parent, you may be concerned about the
amount of violence in today's computer and video games. Some experts
say that violence in video games and media adversely affects our
children, while others claim that playing video games helps improve
hand-eye coordination.
In this article, you will learn what cutting edge
research tells us about happens when a child's developing brain is
repeatedly exposed to images of violence, so you can make an
informed decision about whether to allow and/or limit violent
computer and video games in your home.
First, a little brain science. Babies are born
with approximately 100 billion neurons in their brain. At birth,
they have formed more than 10,000 neural connections which pales in
comparison to the quadrillions of connections that will be formed
over a lifetime. At birth, a baby's brain is primed for growth.
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What Fires Together, Wires Together _____________________________________
This underscores the importance of positive
experiences to the developing brain.
The mantra of today's neuroscientists is: "what
fires together, wires together." This means that the experiences a
child has create certain types of neural networks.
In my book Keepers of the Children, I emphasize
that the brain builds a network that can survive or thrive in its
environment, depending upon the support, care and responsiveness of
the parents, caretakers and the level of stress in the child's home.
Chronic stress impairs the brain which may make a child more
susceptible to stress and anxiety in the future.
Parenting article key point - What fires together,
wires together in the brain.
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Use It Or Lose It
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Parents of teens won't be surprised to learn that
the last part of the brain to develop is the prefrontal cortex which
can be thought of as the brain's supervisor and is responsible for
making decisions, managing urges, impulses and acting with
diplomacy.
The prefrontal cortex begins its development in
adolescence, starting with a process called pruning which can wipe
out entire neural networks in a child's brain. This is where the
adage "use it or lose it" applies and explains why a child who has
made reasonably sound decisions in the past may suddenly start
behaving impulsively.
Parenting article key point - Research shows that
the prefrontal cortex is disengaged when a child is playing video
games.
Couple neural pruning with blossoming (the
creation of new neural networks that are formed through daily
experience) and a teen video gamer's compulsive need to play violent
video games and you have a recipe for disaster.
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Disengaged Prefrontal Cortex
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The reason becomes clear when you understand that
recent brain research shows that the prefrontal cortex is disengaged
when exposed to violent images, while the aggression center of the
brain is activated. (MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the
technology used by today's scientists to look inside the brain and
determine which areas light up when engaging in certain activities.)
What this means to parents of an adolescent gamer
is that at the height of the development of the prefrontal cortex
(the brain's supervisor and the seat of our humanity), this
all-important part of the brain is repeatedly disengaged. Of course,
parents should be equally disturbed to learn that while this is
happening, the aggression center of the brain is lighting up like a
slot machine.
Parenting article key point: Video game addiction
is such a problem in some countries that these countries have
established treatment centers.
Of course this will come as no surprise to parents
who have observed their children before, during and after playing
violent games, such as World of Warcraft (which is an internet game
with over 9 million users worldwide) or Call of Duty, an Xbox game.
Although it's important to have brain researchers
on our side, we don't need science to prove to us that violence is
junk food for a growing brain (and adult brains too.) Most parents
have known this all along.
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Video Game Addition
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You may be surprised to learn that video game
addiction is fast becoming a problem in countries like Korea, where
technology has advanced at a faster rate than in the United States.
To date, Korea has forty treatment centers that are dedicated to
"video game addiction." As a parent, this alone should give you
pause.
Parenting article key point: when video gamers
stop play, their brains create less dopamine—a feel-good brain
chemical.
For professionals who have noticed that the word
"addiction" is overused in our society and understand that, by
definition, an addiction has physical withdrawal symptoms, you may
wonder how video game play could be characterized as an addiction.
After all, what are the withdrawal symptoms? This
was the question I posed to David Walsh, PhD, author of eight books
and one of our countries foremost experts on media exposure and the
developing brain. According to Dr. Walsh, the answer is in what
happens in the brain.
Video game play releases excess dopamine in the
brain which gives the gamer a rush of feeling good (and I suspect,
powerful). In order to maintain that sense of feeling on top of the
world, the gamer must play continuously. Without it, the gamer
experiences what I call a "dopamine crash."
End of Part I of Parenting Article on Video Games
and the Developing Brain. In Part II, I will explore the
implications of what we've uncovered in Part I. Stay tuned to gain a
more thorough understanding of how exposure to video games and media
affect the developing adolescent brain.
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