Health Advantages for Gamers

Brain scientist Dr. Daphne Bavelier debunks myths and stereotypes about playing video games with quantitative results in her video games benefits keynote.

Video games have often been perceived and incriminated as the culprit of poor attention spans, violent behavior and weakened eyesight amongst other things in children and young adults. Not only do video games improve the above mentioned categories, they also increase memory capacity, focus as well as faster conflict resolution.

Dr. Bavelier conducts multiple experiments in her lab like role playing scenarios while observing changes through brain imaging to attempt to prove and disprove certain myths. Her engaging video games benefits keynote includes the audiences' participation to demonstrate the significance of her findings. As the audience members join in on her live demo of object-tracking games and puzzles, the results become obvious that those who play more games have almost double the attention span as those who don't. Frequent gamers are also capable of drawing detail within clutter as well as "detecting different levels of grey," which is extremely beneficial, according to Dr. Bavelier, in preventing traffic accidents in poor weather conditions. These skills acquired from gaming have long-lasting effects even long after the gamer stops playing.