Move faster, think later: Women who play action video games have quicker visually-guided responses with later onset visuomotor-related brain activity

Explicit benefits: Motor sequence acquisition and short-term retention in adults who do and do not stutter

Motor sequencing skills have been found to distinguish individuals who experience developmental stuttering from those who do not stutter, with these differences extending to non-verbal sequencing behaviour. Previous research has focused on measures of reaction time and practice under externally cued conditions to decipher the motor learning abilities of persons who stutter. Without the confounds of extraneous demands and sensorimotor processing, we investigated motor sequence learning under conditions of explicit awareness and focused practice among adults with persistent development stuttering. Across two consecutive practice sessions, 18 adults who stutter (AWS) and 18 adults who do not stutter (ANS) performed the finger-to-thumb opposition sequencing (FOS) task. Both groups demonstrated significant within-session performance improvements, as evidenced by fast on-line learning of finger sequences on day one. Additionally, neither participant group showed deterioration of their learning gains the following day, indicating a relative stabilization of finger sequencing performance during the off-line period. These findings suggest that under explicit and focused conditions, early motor learning gains and their short-term retention do not differ between AWS and ANS. Additional factors influencing motor sequencing performance, such as task complexity and saturation of learning, are also considered. Further research into explicit motor learning and its generalization following extended practice and follow-up in persons who stutter is warranted. The potential benefits of motor practice generalizability among individuals who stutter and its relevance to supporting treatment outcomes are suggested as future areas of investigation.

Association of Video Gaming With Cognitive Performance Among Children

IMPORTANCE

Although most research has linked video gaming to subsequent increases in aggressive behavior in children after accounting for prior aggression, findings have been divided with respect to video gaming's association with cognitive skills.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the association between video gaming and cognition in children using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

In this case-control study, cognitive performance and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal were compared in video gamers (VGs) and non-video gamers (NVGs) during response inhibition and working memory using task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a large data set of 9- and 10-year-old children from the ABCD study, with good control of demographic, behavioral, and psychiatric confounding effects. A sample from the baseline assessment of the ABCD 2.0.1 release in 2019 was largely recruited across 21 sites in the US through public, private, and charter elementary schools using a population neuroscience approach to recruitment, aiming to mirror demographic variation in the US population. Children with valid neuroimaging and behavioral data were included. Some exclusions included common MRI contraindications, history of major neurologic disorders, and history of traumatic brain injury.

EXPOSURES

Participants completed a self-reported screen time survey including an item asking children to report the time specifically spent on video gaming. All fMRI tasks were performed by all participants.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

Video gaming time, cognitive performance, and BOLD signal assessed with n-back and stop signal tasks on fMRI. Collected data were analyzed between October 2019 and October 2020.

RESULTS

A total of 2217 children (mean [SD] age, 9.91 [0.62] years; 1399 [63.1%] female) participated in this study. The final sample used in the stop signal task analyses consisted of 1128 NVGs (0 gaming hours per week) and 679 VGs who played at least 21 hours per week. The final sample used in the n-back analyses consisted of 1278 NVGs who had never played video games (0 hours per week of gaming) and 800 VGs who played at least 21 hours per week. The VGs performed better on both fMRI tasks compared with the NVGs. Nonparametric analyses of fMRI data demonstrated a greater BOLD signal in VGs in the precuneus during inhibitory control. During working memory, a smaller BOLD signal was observed in VGs in parts of the occipital cortex and calcarine sulcus and a larger BOLD signal in the cingulate, middle, and frontal gyri and the precuneus.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

In this study, compared with NVGs, VGs were found to exhibit better cognitive performance involving response inhibition and working memory as well as altered BOLD signal in key regions of the cortex responsible for visual, attention, and memory processing. The findings are consistent with videogaming improving cognitive abilities that involve response inhibition and working memory and altering their underlying cortical pathways.

Quantitatively assessing aging effects in rapid motor behaviours: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

An individual's rapid motor skills allow them to perform many daily activities and are a hallmark of physical health. Although age and sex are both known to affect motor performance, standardized methods for assessing their impact on upper limb function are limited.

METHODS

Here we perform a cross-sectional study of 643 healthy human participants in two interactive motor tasks developed to quantify sensorimotor abilities, Object-Hit (OH) and Object-Hit-and-Avoid (OHA). The tasks required participants to hit virtual objects with and without the presence of distractor objects. Velocities and positions of hands and objects were recorded by a robotic exoskeleton, allowing a variety of parameters to be calculated for each trial. We verified that these tasks are viable for measuring performance in healthy humans and we examined whether any of our recorded parameters were related to age or sex.

RESULTS

Our analysis shows that both OH and OHA can assess rapid motor behaviours in healthy human participants. It also shows that while some parameters in these tasks decline with age, those most associated with the motor system do not. Three parameters show significant sex-related effects in OH, but these effects disappear in OHA.

CONCLUSIONS

This study suggests that the underlying effect of aging on rapid motor behaviours is not on the capabilities of the motor system, but on the brain's capacity for processing inputs into motor actions. Additionally, this study provides a baseline description of healthy human performance in OH and OHA when using these tasks to investigate age-related declines in sensorimotor ability.

The Benefits of Video Games on Brain Cognitive Function: A Systematic Review of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies

Benefits of video games on cognitive function have been proved by increasing evidence. However, reasons for game-induced changes in cognitive function are still elusive. Therefore, this study conducted a systematic review of brain function activation changes in association with video games. We retrieved publications from three electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycInfo), with publication dates before 8 February 2021. After screening the study with fMRI data, 13 studies were included in this work, including 9 cross-sectional studies and 4 types of research. In this review, we summarized the potential benefits of video games on cognitive function and discussed the effects of different types of video games on cognitive function. In particular, we highlighted the effect of video games on attention ability and visuospatial ability and addressed the functional brain activation changes in frontal and parietal lobes and other related brain regions induced by games. Finally, we pointed out that when discussing the effect of video games on brain function, types of video games should be carefully categorized.

Sex-related differences in visuomotor skill recovery following concussion in working-aged adults

BACKGROUND

The ability to perform visually-guided motor tasks requires the transformation of visual information into programmed motor outputs. When the guiding visual information does not align spatially with the motor output, the brain processes rules to integrate somatosensory information into an appropriate motor response. Performance on such rule-based, "cognitive-motor integration" tasks is affected in concussion. Here, we investigate the relationship between visuomotor skill performance, concussion history, and sex during the course of a post-concussion management program.

METHODS

Fifteen acutely concussed working-aged adults, 11 adults with a history of concussion, and 17 healthy controls all completed a recovery program over the course of 4 weeks. Prior to, mid-way, and following the program, all participants were tested on their visuomotor skills.

RESULTS

We observed an overall change in visuomotor behaviour in all groups, as participants completed the tasks faster and more accurately. Specifically, we observed significant visuomotor skill improvement between the first and final sessions in participants with a concussion history compared to no-concussion-history controls. Notably, we observed a stronger recovery of these skills in females.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicate that (1) concussion impairs visuomotor skill performance, (2) the performance of complex, rule-based tasks showed improvement over the course of a recovery program, and (3) stronger recovery in females suggests sex-related differences in the brain networks controlling skilled performance, and the effect of injury on these networks.

Why iPlay: The Relationships of Autistic and Schizotypal Traits With Patterns of Video Game Use

Video games are popular and ubiquitous aspects of human culture, but their relationships to psychological and neurophysiological traits have yet to be analyzed in social-evolutionary frameworks. We examined the relationships of video game usage, motivations, and preferences with autistic and schizotypal traits and two aspects of neurophysiology, reaction time and targeting time. Participants completed the Autism Quotient, Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, a Video Game Usage Questionnaire, and two neurophysiological tasks. We tested in particular the hypotheses, motivated by theory and previous work, that: (1) participants with higher autism scores would play video games more, and participants with higher schizotypy scores would play video games less; and (2) autism and positive schizotypy would be associated with opposite patterns of video game use, preferences and motivations. Females, but not males, with higher autism scores played more video games, and exhibited evidence of relatively male-typical video game genre preferences and motivations. By contrast, positive schizotypy was associated with reduced video game use in both genders, for several measures of game use frequency. In line with previous findings, males played video game more than females did overall, preferred action video games, and exhibited faster reaction and targeting times. Females preferred Puzzle and Social Simulation games. Faster reaction and targeting times were associated with gaming motives related to skill development and building behavior. These findings show that gaming use and patterns reflect aspects of psychology, and gender, related to social cognition and imagination, as well as aspects of neurophysiology. More generally, the results suggest that video game use is notably affected by levels of autistic and schizotypal traits, and that video games may provide an evolutionarily novel medium for imaginative play in which immersive play experiences can be decoupled from social interaction.

Quiet Eye and Computerized Precision Tasks in First-Person Shooter Perspective Esport Games

The gaze behavior in sports and other applied settings has been studied for more than 20 years. A common finding is related to the “quiet eye” (QE), predicting that the duration of the last fixation before a critical event is associated with higher performance. Unlike previous studies conducted in applied settings with mobile eye trackers, we investigate the QE in a context similar to esport, in which participants click the mouse to hit targets presented on a computer screen under different levels of cognitive load. Simultaneously, eye and mouse movements were tracked using a high-end remote eye tracker at 300 Hz. Consistent with previous studies, we found that longer QE fixations were associated with higher performance. Increasing the cognitive load delayed the onset of the QE fixation, but had no significant influence on the QE duration. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of how the QE is defined, the quality of the eye-tracker data, and the type of analysis applied to QE data.

Eye movement influences on coupled and decoupled eye-hand coordination tasks

Visually guided reaching precision and accuracy depend on the level of coupling between movements of the eyes and hand. In the present study, participants performed central fixations and either saccadic or smooth pursuit eye movements during fast and accurate reaching tasks involving eye-hand coupling and decoupling to better understand type of eye movement influence over upper limb control. Some eye-hand coupling and decoupling tasks also included hand reversals, where the hand moves away from the target to direct a cursor toward the target to account for various levels of hand-cursor and eye-cursor coupling. Regardless of eye-movement type, eye-hand-cursor coupling produced an endpoint accuracy advantage over decoupling. Use of hand reversal decreased peak speed and increased response time of the hand, whether considering fixation or a given eye movement. Use of smooth pursuit slowed hand movements relative to saccades, yet improved endpoint accuracy. Compared to central fixations, using smooth pursuit also slowed hand movements, while using saccades decreased, thus improved, hand reaction times. Data suggest an advantage, when using smooth pursuit to track the hand movement for the greatest endpoint accuracy, an advantage when using saccades for the fastest movements, and an eye-hand coupling advantage when using saccades for the shortest reactions. Researchers should provide clear eye-movement instructions for participants and/or monitor the eyes when assessing similar upper limb control to account for possible differences in eye movements used. Moreover, the type of eye movement chosen for participants should correspond to the primary goal of the task.

"Neural differences in expert guitarists during over-learned non-standard visuomotor mapping of abstract versus concrete information"

Using visual information to perform actions is a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Musicians commonly translate visual information into action using both concrete and abstract visual information. We exposed expert guitarists to four types of familiar visual depictions of action instruction including musical notation (very abstract), tablature (abstract), chord diagrams (more concrete), and actual pictures of guitars chords being formed (very concrete). These were shown during fMRI scanning as the guitarists formed the appropriate chords (as visually depicted) on a magnet safe guitar fret board with strings, or where they simply viewed the visual stimuli without an action. Whole brain contrasts revealed that the right precuneus was more active for abstract instruction while an occipito-insular circuit was more active for concrete instruction. The current findings highlight that the degree of over-learned visual abstraction is an important factor modulating visual-motor processing.

Converging Evidence Supporting the Cognitive Link between Exercise and Esport Performance: A Dual Systematic Review

(1) Background: Research into action video games (AVG) has surged with the popularity of esports over the past three decades. Specifically, evidence is mounting regarding the importance of enhanced cognitive abilities for successful esports performance. However, due to the sedentary nature in which AVGs are played, concerns are growing with the increased engagement young adults have with AVGs. While evidence exists supporting the benefits of exercise for cognition generally in older adult, children and clinical populations, little to no work has synthesized the existing knowledge regarding the effect of exercise specifically on the cognitive abilities required for optimal esports performance in young adults. (2) Method: We conducted a dual-systematic review to identify the cognitive abilities integral to esports performance (Phase 1) and the efficacy of exercise to enhance said cognitive abilities (Phase 2). (3) Results: We demonstrate the importance of four specific cognitive abilities for AVG play (attention, task-switching, information processing, and memory abilities) and the effect that different types and durations of physical exercise has on each. (4) Conclusion: Together, these results highlight the role that exercise can have on not only combating the sedentary nature of gaming, but also its potential role in facilitating the cognitive aspects of gaming performance.

Exposure to first-person shooter videogames is associated with multisensory temporal precision and migraine incidence

Adaptive interactions with the environment require optimal integration and segregation of sensory information. Yet, temporal misalignments in the presentation of visual and auditory stimuli may generate illusory phenomena such as the sound-induced flash illusion, in which a single flash paired with multiple auditory stimuli induces the perception of multiple illusory flashes. This phenomenon has been shown to be robust and resistant to feedback training. According to a Bayesian account, this is due to a statistically optimal combination of the signals operated by the nervous system. From this perspective, individual susceptibility to the illusion might be moulded through prolonged experience. For example, repeated exposure to the illusion and prolonged training sessions partially impact on the reported illusion. Therefore, extensive and immersive audio-visual experience, such as first-person shooter videogames, should sharpen individual capacity to correctly integrate multisensory information over time, leading to more veridical perception. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the temporal profile of the sound-induced illusion in a group of expert first-person shooter gamers and a non-players group. In line with the hypotheses, gamers experience significantly narrower windows of illusion (~87 ms) relative to non-players (~105 ms), leading to higher veridical reports in gamers (~68%) relative to non-players (~59%). Moreover, according to recent literature, we tested whether audio-visual intensive training in gamers could be related to the incidence of migraine, and found that its severity may be directly proportioned to the time spent on videogames. Overall, these results suggest that continued training within audio-visual environments such as first-person shooter videogames improves temporal discrimination and sensory integration. This finding may pave the way for future therapeutic strategies based on self-administered multisensory training. On the other hand, the impact of intensive training on visual-related stress disorders, such as migraine incidence, should be taken into account as a risk factor during therapeutic planning.

Effective learning is accompanied by high-dimensional and efficient representations of neural activity

A fundamental cognitive process is to map value and identity onto the objects we learn about. However, what space best embeds this mapping is not completely understood. Here we develop tools to quantify the space and organization of such a mapping in neural responses as reflected in functional MRI, to show that quick learners have a higher dimensional representation than slow learners, and hence more easily distinguishable whole-brain responses to objects of different value. Furthermore, we find that quick learners display more compact embedding of their neural responses, and hence have higher ratios of their stimuli dimension to their embedding dimension, which is consistent with greater efficiency of cognitive coding. Lastly, we investigate the neurophysiological drivers at smaller scales and study the complementary distinguishability of whole-brain responses. Our results demonstrate a spatial organization of neural responses characteristic of learning and offer geometric measures applicable to identifying efficient coding in higher-order cognitive processes.

Female Gaming, Gaming Addiction, and the Role of Women Within Gaming Culture: A Narrative Literature Review

Research investigating female gaming has begun to emerge despite gaming being traditionally more popular with males. Research in the 21st century has drawn attention to the role of women in culture, society, and technology, and female gaming is one of the growing phenomena not to have been researched in depth. The aim of the present paper was to review female gaming (i.e., the role of females within video game culture) and identify any associated psychopathological symptomatology. The review adapted the Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research (SPIDER) model in conducting a narrative literature review. A search of three scientific electronic databases yielded 49 papers for further evaluation. From a methodological perspective, studies had to fulfill the following criteria to be included: i) published between the years 2000 and 2018; ii) assessed female gaming or the female position within gaming culture, iii) contained quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches to produce empirical data or discuss theoretical implications through reviews, iv) be retrievable as a full-text peer-reviewed journal paper, and v) published in English, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or French. Four categories emerged from the papers: i) the benefits of female gaming, ii) why women might play video games less than men, iii) perceptions and realities of female characters within video games, and iv) women's position in gaming culture. The main findings showed playing video games has benefits for women in terms of enhancing cognitive, social, and physical abilities. However, they are less encouraged to play video games due to negative expectations based on gender and/or experiences during game play. Video games are associated with stereotypical male characteristics, such as being overly aggressive, and frequently contain sexualized content. Female gamers appear to require coping strategies to handle online harassment. Females look for different things in video games, which are not often included in game designs thereby limiting their abilities. For instance, female avatar representation-which is exaggerated and hypersexualized-can prompt social comparisons and lead to feelings of decreased self-esteem, depression, and other impacts on well-being. Overall, there are still obstacles for women playing video games even though they comprise half of the gaming population.

Changes in Mental Workload and Motor Performance Throughout Multiple Practice Sessions Under Various Levels of Task Difficulty

The allocation of mental workload is critical to maintain cognitive-motor performance under various demands. While mental workload has been investigated during performance, limited efforts have examined it during cognitive-motor learning, while none have concurrently manipulated task difficulty. It is reasonable to surmise that the difficulty level at which a skill is practiced would impact the rate of skill acquisition and also the rate at which mental workload is reduced during learning (relatively slowed for challenging compared to easier tasks). This study aimed to monitor mental workload by assessing cortical dynamics during a task practiced under two difficulty levels over four days while perceived task demand, performance, and electroencephalography (EEG) were collected. As expected, self-reported mental workload was reduced, greater working memory engagement via EEG theta synchrony was observed, and reduced cortical activation, as indexed by progressive EEG alpha synchrony was detected during practice. Task difficulty was positively related to the magnitude of alpha desynchrony and accompanied by elevations in the theta-alpha ratio. Counter to expectation, the absence of an interaction between task difficulty and practice days for both theta and alpha power indicates that the refinement of mental processes throughout learning occurred at a comparable rate for both levels of difficulty. Thus, the assessment of brain dynamics was sensitive to the rate of change of cognitive workload with practice, but not to the degree of difficulty. Future work should consider a broader range of task demands and additional measures of brain processes to further assess this phenomenon.