Onderzoekers aan de universiteit van Pittsburg kunnen jouw gameprestaties voorspellen door het meten van het volume van bepaalde structuren in het brein.

“The new study, published today in the journal “Cerebral Cortex,” found that nearly a quarter of the variability in achievement seen among men and women trained on a new video game could be predicted by measuring the volume of three structures in their brains. The study adds to the evidence that specific parts of the striatum, a collection of distinctive tissues tucked deep inside the cerebral cortex, profoundly influence a person’s ability to refine his or her motor skills, learn new procedures, develop useful strategies, and adapt to a quickly changing environme”

Opgelet, dit gaat niet over hoe gamen het brein zou veranderen, maar over hoe men bepaalde aanleg zou kunnen ontdekken:

“Research has shown that expert video gamers outperform novices on many basic measures of attention and perception, but other studies have found that training novices on video games for 20 or more hours often yields no measurable cognitive benefits.
These contradictory findings suggest that pre-existing individual differences in the brain might predict variability in learning rates, the authors wrote.”

En dit geeft mogelijkheden voor het onderwijs, alhoewel ik nog niet direct zie hoe men in de klas eerst een brainscan doet:

““This study tells us a lot about how the brain works when it is trying to learn a complex task,” Erickson said. “We can use information about the brain to predict who is going to learn certain tasks at a more rapid rate.” Such information might be useful in education, where longer training periods may be required for some students, or in treating disability or dementia, where information about the brain regions affected by injury or disease could lead to a better understanding of the skills that might also need attention, he said.”

(bron ()