Game Gallery Amusements

Researcher Sabine Grüsser-Sinopoli of Berlin's Charité University Clinic presented images from games sequences to a group of gamers. She used an EEG to measure their brain activity. The measurements revealed that the brains of gamers react to such images similar to the way that compulsive gamblers react when they see a deck of cards or the way that heroin addicts react when they see needles. Presenting her findings on Monday in Washington at the Society for Neurosciences, the researcher believes that her study suggests that video games might be addictive.
Grüsser-Sinopoli believes that many of the effects of drug addiction that last the longest have to do with acquired response behavior rather than chemical reactions in the brain. In addition, addicts also come to associate things actually not directly related to their drug addiction – such as the street where they buy their heroin – with the physical experience of drug consumption. Such relations survive in the brain many years after the physical addiction has been overcome.
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