<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail-">9, <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></div>Christian Saucier <<a href="mailto:csaucier@sovacs.com">csaucier@sovacs.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Thinking is good for the brain!<br></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Well, I do believe that, barring delusions, manias, obsessions, etc.. In what circumstances hippocampal activity is good is probably just not known. Also not know is whether growth or decline goes on on a continuous basis. Did my brain add or subtract anything today? </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"></div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">If you use your</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">> hippocampus, it will grow grey matter</span><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">Not playing some games, according to the article.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">bill k wrote <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></div>That might mean that brain improvements in one area could cause worse performance in other areas.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">From my background in learning theory I'd say that it's hard to tell</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"> if learning one thing helps or hurts learning another. It's an empirical question. When I switched from tennis to racketball I found some positive and some negative transfer.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">Taxi drivers: use it or lose it seems to sum that up. Why don't those morons just assign drivers to certain areas, not the whole city? Have they heard of GPS?</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">bill w</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail-">
</span><span class="gmail-">> The difference between a "first-person shooting game" and "3D-platform<br>
> games" used in this study seem very narrow to me. I would be interested to<br>
> know the specific games that were used.<br>
><br>
> Maybe another way to view this conclusion is simply this: <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></div>If you use your<br>
> hippocampus, it will grow grey matter; if you do not use your hippocampus,<br>
> it will lose grey matter. This should apply not only to the playing of<br>
> video games, but to practically any other types of human action.<br>
><br>
> This is the summary of that study from <a href="http://nature.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">nature.com</a>: "The hippocampus is<br>
> critical to healthy cognition, yet results in the current study show that<br>
> action video game players have reduced grey matter within the hippocampus. A<br>
> subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that<br>
> first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in<br>
> participants using non-spatial memory strategies. Conversely, participants<br>
> who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey<br>
> matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on<br>
> 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the<br>
> functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the<br>
> effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus.<br>
> These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the<br>
> hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person<br>
> employs and the genre of the game." --<br>
> <a href="http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2017155a.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.nature.com/mp/<wbr>journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/<wbr>mp2017155a.html</a><br>
><br>
<br>
<br>
</span>They have already found this with studies of London taxi drivers that<br>
had to spend 3 or 4 years memorising the London street map and<br>
planning routes.<br>
(Uber and GPS may end this exercise).<br>
<br>
<<a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/12/08/acquiring-the-knowledge-changes-the-brains-of-london-cab-drivers/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://blogs.<wbr>discovermagazine.com/<wbr>notrocketscience/2011/12/08/<wbr>acquiring-the-knowledge-<wbr>changes-the-brains-of-london-<wbr>cab-drivers/</a>><br>
<br>
This task did increase the size of the hippocampus.<br>
Quote:<br>
She showed that a driver’s hippocampus is most active when they first<br>
plan a route. She found that the hippocampus shrinks back to a normal<br>
size once drivers retire. And she found that acquiring The Knowledge<br>
comes at a cost – taxi drivers find it more difficult to integrate new<br>
routes into their existing maps, and other aspects of their memory<br>
seemed to suffer.<br>
-------<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></div>That might mean that brain improvements in one area could cause worse<br>
performance in other areas.<br>
<br>
<br>
BillK<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div></div>