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Comment by QAPereo | Hacker News Reader

Non-sensationalist headline:

A subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in participants using non-spatial memory strategies.

And the rest of it, which changes the whole character of the article...

Conversely, participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game.

http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201715...

Interesting study, terrible article.

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So does that mean that people who play games that have maps and that keep the maps in their heads develop grey matter, but people who just blindly run around the map and don't learn where things are will lose grey matter?

What games DON'T require spatial memory? I'm having a hard time thinking of one.

Plants vs zombies

The study focused on "first-person shooting games". I don't think that counts :)

There is in fact a plants vs zombies fps for the xbox (plants vs zombies garden warfare). I've only played the second one in that sub-series, but it seems to have non-linear maps.

A lot of modern games that offer convenience features like GPS navigation in GTA or the quest markers in Skyrim. I prefer playing GTA with the GPS turned off because it forces me to actually learn the lay of the land.

Regardless of fancy navigation mechanics I don't think I've ever played a 3D environment game where after some time I didn't memorize the map to some degree. I assume this is the case for most people that play games.

I'm more concerned for people that drive around using a GPS in an actual car and somehow never learn the city layout.

. . . I may or may not in fact have considerably more of the WoW geography memorized than the layout of the city I live in.

Same. Sad thing is, as many of these virtual spaces that I have memorized, I've never utilized them for directed memorization efforts for other information using the "Method of the Loci" or "Mind Palace" techniques.

Trying to do this on my Zelda: Breath of the Wild master mode replay. Turned on the "Pro" HUD, which deactivates the map and requires more geography and landmark based navigation... surprisingly fun.

That reminds me of the game Firewatch where they gave you a compass and a paper-like map and you had to use landmarks that you recognized on the map and in the environment to get around.

I'd like to see more large scale adventure games like this.

My experience with this kind of thing (like turning off quest markers in oblivion/skyrim) is that the game has been designed with quest markers in mind, and by turning them off the navigation systems stop making much sense. ie the map lacks "natural" markers, and because quest markers exist large view distance isnt very nexessary (and thus non-optimized) so the only larger objects to use can't be seen from a far distance, and the map is just generally designed without interconnectivity or even proper consistency, because the connections are through the markers.

Games depending on such GPS systems tend to be significantly hampered by its removal (which makes sense), and thus such basic removal is rarely a sufficient fix.

The only reason I'd imagine BotW might work fine is that Nintendo has made open(ish) world games before, and as far as I can remember, have never made much use of such systems. More likely than not, the game was designed without markers, and markers added after the fact; which is clearly untrue of most other modern open-world games

Sadly it's much harder to play without mapping "features" in modern games. In Morrowind quests included detailed (or sometimes intentionally not) directions in the journal text because that was the only way for you to find the objective. In Skyrim the journal entries are far less detailed because the game designers expect you to just follow the magic floating icon.

I lot of single player campaign FPSs (with or without arena sections) are railroady, not requiring map knowledge.

Also, isn't running around blindly how you learn a map? I know that's how I 'trained' myself on CoD4 until I knew the maps inside out. So was I killing grey matter before creating it?

Learning a map and using predictive spatial strategies seem to be distinguished in the study.

It's been a long time since I touched the pro circuit of any game, but in Q3 the best players were the ones who could predict where you were in addition to where they needed to go. Pretty different skill, and it took a ton of very dedicated practice.

Didn't read TFA but I assume that points to mostly single player experiences or procedurally generated content.

I.e. In the COD4 campaign you don't need to know the map, you can just blindly run through the level killing what's in front of you until you hit a progress trigger.

Isn't that how most people run their lives?

Wondering this as well. Most games do use spacial memory although some shooters are pretty mindless and navigating requires very little thought or effort (think Diablo 3's more linear maps where it's see enemy, shoot, move forward, see enemy, shoot, move forward, etc).

It seems to me like games like Portal / Talos Principle / Amnesia would rely on spacial memory more than most games out there. Can anyone confirm or deny if this hypothesis is correct?

Playing counter strike professionally requires spatial memory. Even regular competitive play does this. So does Titanfall.

Yeah. I would expect all competitive gaming to have a much heavier mental load than lower-level gaming.

I think folks overestimate the quality of many gamers.

Especially if players don't take time to gain a degree of mastery with the game and move from title to title.

Thief 1, 2 and their fan missions require a lot more spatial memory and awareness than modern titles. Similarly with System Shock 1 and 2.

I remember reading a study about different navigation strategies. In one strategy you developed a mental map of the area and you mentally navigated that map as a means to navigate the real world. Another strategy was the landmark strategy where you would learn procedural directions between landmarks and so navigation relied much less on mental maps and much more on procedural memory. I suspect these different strategies are at play in the responses noted in the study.

I played a lot of video games growing up, particularly first person shooters. I feel like I just had an epiphany. I am incredibly terrible with direction sense in real life. I wonder if video games and relying on map overlays had something to do with it.

> participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies

My first questions were: "How was this measured/detected? How might I know whether I used these strategies when I play games?"

The answer from your Nature link is very detailed, too detailed to reproduce here. See the section titled, "4 on 8 virtual maze". IIUC they partitioned the groups into "spatial" vs "response" learners by determining whether they navigated a maze while using a memorized sequence of landmarks or without.

TLDR - Video Games are acting like "grapefruit" to the hippocampus.

Interesting, I played a lot of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds last weekend and this does bring a few things to mind: some FPSes are highly reliant upon twitch reactions and that sort of deep reptile brain panic response. It improves your reflexes and precision, but likely punishes higher order thinking.

Other games encourage you to plan long term and work within systems.

I think these exercise very different parts of your brain - is it possible there's simply a trade off here?

On the other hand, single player in call of duty is about the most mind numbing thing it's possible to play, there's no competition, it's just kill guys and advance in a straight line. Would be interesting to compare with more competitive or open world games.

I played a lot of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds last weekend [...] It improves your reflexes and precision, but likely punishes higher order thinking.

I'd argue that spatial and temporal considerations are critical in PUBG. Sure, it's not real-time strategy kind of planning, but understanding your exposure to others based on elevation & movement speed, resource management, blue/white perimeter placement and strategy to get to the objective while avoiding enemy LOS does encourage higher order thinking.

Please, do this kind of analysis with every new.

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