Physiological and emotional responses to violent events in an FPS game (Ravaja et al., 2008)

I recently learned the term science journalism and what I am doing approximate to that: Reporting on scientific findings for the general public, or in this case to gamers.

 Anyways, I was browsing in kotaku when an article in gamecritics.com had made a reference to study about participants emotional and physiological responses to violent events. Since I’m still an undergraduate student, I am so busy with a lot of things that I feel that this blog is neglected…

 Abstract

The authors examined emotional valence- and arousal-related phasic psychophysiological responses to different violent events in the first-person shooter video game “James Bond 007: NightFire” among 36 young adults. Event-related changes in zygomaticus major, corrugator supercilii, and orbicularis oculi electromyographic (EMG) activity and skin conductance level (SCL) were recorded, and the participants rated their emotions and the trait psychoticism based on the Psychoticism dimension of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire–Revised, Short Form. Wounding and killing the opponent elicited an increase in SCL and a decrease in zygomatic and orbicularis oculi EMG activity. The decrease in zygomatic and orbicularis oculi activity was less pronounced among high Psychoticism scorers compared with low Psychoticism scorers. The wounding and death of the player’s own character (James Bond) elicited an increase in SCL and zygomatic and orbicularis oculi EMG activity and a decrease in corrugator activity. Instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent may elicit high-arousal negative affect (anxiety), with high Psychoticism scorers experiencing less anxiety than low Psychoticism scorers. Although counterintuitive, the wounding and death of the player’s own character may increase some aspect of positive emotion.

Gender differences in brain activations while playing video games (Hoeft et al., 2008)

gamepolitics.com had posted a study that was mentioned by a news radio about how men are more likely to be addicted to video games than women. Following the comments in gamepolitics.com, it seems that again we need someone to read the article directly in order to present all the information to prevent any misinformation. More details can be found in the news release from Stanford’s School of medicine.

Abstract

Little is known about the underlying neural processes of playing computer/video games, despite the high prevalence of its gaming behavior, especially in males. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasting a space-infringement game with a control task, males showed greater activation and functional connectivity compared to females in the mesocorticolimbic system. These findings may be attributable to higher motivational states in males, as well as gender differences in reward prediction, learning reward values and cognitive state during computer video games. These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become “hooked” on video games than females.

Fumiko Hoeft, initially misspelled as Fumiko Hayft, and colleagues conducted a study to look into gender differences in brain activations while playing a simple video game.

Now in their short literature review, they described studies that have found that addiction to video games are more likely to occur among men than women. (Griffiths & Hunt, 1998). Along with other brain scan studies that show brain activations while playing video games. So they decided to look at specific areas of the brain, the mesocorticolimbic system, and see whether there are gender differences.