This Is Your Brain on Violence

Correct. We were concerned that our institutional review board wouldn’t permit us to use a mature-rated game in 13- to 17-year-olds. We reviewed many of the teen-rated games that were popular that we knew had violent content. “Medal of Honor: Frontline” is a first-person shooter game. The player is the shooter. He’s basically an Allied fighter fighting Nazi Germany.

Do you think it matters how violent the games are? This one was just Army weapons. Would machine-gun shootings in the games seem to hurt teens’ brains more than more minor violence?

I’m not sure you can delineate things that finely. They enter into the fight-or-flight reaction. These individuals have activation in parts of their brain indicating arousal.

Some people even blame school shootings on violent videogames. What do you think?

I’ve seen those same reports, too. Those are just anecdotal situations. There have been shootings, and at least in a couple instances, the people were involved in doing these violent games. One of the people had no practice shooting weapons but had practice in these videogames and had incredible accuracy. I’m not really an expert on how that sort of behavior transfers to the real world. That certainly is one of the concerns that some people have.

What got you and your colleagues interested in this topic? Are you the parents of kids who play— or don’t play— videogames?