The study shows one week of playing violent video games can create changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men, a PR Newswire statement says.
The study took a random sample of 22 young adults (18 to 29) with little exposure to violent video games. Half were asked to play a shooting game for 10 hours at home for one week and then stop for one week. The other group was asked not to play any violent video games for the same two-week period.
All 22 men underwent an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) at the beginning of the exam, after one week and at the end of the two weeks. During the fMRI, the men were asked to complete simple emotional and cognitive interference tasks -- actions designed to limit a subject's ability to game a response. They were asked to press buttons associated with colors and to count while words signalling violent actions were flashed next to non-violent action words.
The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting task, compared to their baseline results and the results of the control group after one week. After the second week without game play, the changes to the executive regions of the brain were diminished.
"These brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior," Yang Wang, M.D., assistant research professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, told PR Newswire.
There has been a long and controversial fight between people who say violent videos games are bad for kids and game activists who say there is little to no scientific evidence. Before the radiology study is taken as fact it's important to acknowledge some caveats. The study has a relatively small sample size. The researchers -- Tom Hummer, Ph.D., William Kronenberger, Ph.D., Kristine Mosier, D.M.D., Ph.D., and Vincent P. Mathews, M.D. -- only studied 22 young men, only half of which were asked to play a violent video game. Their research was supported by the Center for Successful Parenting in Indiana.
It's unclear which game those 11 young adults were asked to play or if any of the subjects were exposed to other factors such as movies or music with similarly violent materials. It's similarly unclear whether the results were because of the violence in the video game, the duration of time playing the game, or if the study would show similar results for a larger -- or older -- group of people.
Mashable has reached out to some video game studios for comment and is waiting on a response.