NeuroGame: neural mechanisms underlying cognitive improvement in video gamers

The video game market represents an influential and profitable industry. But concerns have been raised how video games impact on the human mind. There are reservations that video gaming may be addictive and foster aggressive behaviour. In contrast, a convincing body of research indicates that playing video games may improve cognitive processing. The exact mechanism thereof is not entirely understood. Most research suggests that video games train individuals in learning how to employ attentional control to focus on processing relevant information, while being able to suppress irrelevant information. Thus, video game players acquire the ability of being able to develop strategies to process information more efficiently. However, no algorithmic solution therefore has been provided yet. Thus, it is not clear which and how attentional control functions contribute to these effects. Moreover, neural mechanisms thereof are not well understood. We hypothesized that alterations in alpha power, i.e., modulations in brain oscillatory activity around 10 Hz, represent a promising neural substrate of video gaming effects. This was because, alpha activity represents an established neural correlate of attention processing given that its amplitude modulation corresponds to alterations in information processing. We investigated this by relating differential cognitive processing in video game players to changes in alpha power modulation. Moreover, we tried to imitate this effect using non-invasive brain stimulation. We were successful in achieving the former but not the latter. We provide a reasonable explanation for this. Thus, our results mostly support our hypothesis according to which altered alpha power may account for gaming effects

Alpha‐tACS alters attentional control but not cognitive functions as video games do: A psychophysical investigation based on the theory of visual attention

Video game players' faster speed of information processing has been shown to coincide with altered posterior alpha power modulation, that is, brain oscillatory activity around 10 Hz. Thus, it was proposed that improved cognitive processing in video game players may be related to differential alpha activity. However, a causal relationship thereof has not yet been established. We addressed this by conducting a non-invasive brain stimulation study to demonstrate that modulating alpha power using transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) may impact on speed of information processing. Furthermore, we aimed to show that this effect correlated with altered attentional control, for example, visuospatial attention and/or top-down control processing, given that this has been suggested to contribute to video gaming effects. Therefore, we recruited 19 non-video game players to undergo one of five brain stimulation conditions while performing a visual short-term memory task at five different days, respectively. Thus, we applied tACS either at 10 Hz (alpha frequency) or at 16.18 Hz (control frequency) either over their left or right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) or a sham stimulation. Individuals' speed of information processing, visuospatial attention and top-down control processing were operationalised using a computational modelling approach based on the theory of visual attention. We found that alpha-tACS applied over individuals' left PPC altered their visuospatial attention orientation but not their speed of information processing. Thus, we were not able to establish a causal relationship between speed of information processing and altered visuospatial attention processing through alpha power modulation using non-invasive brain stimulation