Study: Violent videogames destroy brain function

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The only thing I will admit about video games is that it promotes obesity to a certain degree.

I, for one, think it doesn't promote violence nor that it lowers intelligence. It's just using violence differently, studies will often contradict each other in that regard.

Decades ago, it was proven that people would administer (what they thought were) electric shocks to a person if they were told to by a person in authority. That research isn't challenged - it is pretty much accepted that it is easy to over ride the instinct not to hurt others. There is a much larger body of research that shows that people who are repeatedly rewarded for committing virtual violence do end up becoming more violent. It does not cause each and every person to become a viscous person, but it is a corrosive kind of conditioning.

Meditation has repeatedly been shown to improve cognitive abilities. By exercising that part of the brain daily, it not only makes it easy to switch into a meditative state, it also changes the way the brain works 24/7. The same is true of the areas of the brain involved in violence and anger. Exercise it regularly, and it will get stronger. Most of the time, the urge to violence is suppressed. But when a person is tired or stressed, they tend to lose control over these emotions. And occasionally, people snap.

Monty, it seems to me that video games are only the latest example of the tendency for older generations to blame some new thing for "corrupting the youth." I'm always critical of research that may be influenced by ideological fads.

The problem with placing blame on video games for acts of violence is that millions upon millions play games that contain graphic simulated violence and do NOT commit such acts. No study I've seen has made a firm linkage, though many in the popular press want to jump to the conclusion that playing such games will make a person more prone to violence. The problem with that is that it ignores the broader and more complex issues in our culture that causes disaffected individuals to go on violent rampages.

There is absolutely a connection.

I became so violent once while playing a video game I actuall paused for a moment in my anger and debated if it would be worth it to smash the controller, if I'd feel better.

I cused and screamed so bad that my best friend left my house.

I have played horrifically violent games. RoadKill, Gun,.

But NOTHING has ever infuiated me more than . . . Tom and Jerrys War of the Whiskers.

I'm totally serious.

When I was in kindergardern they forbid us to wear our underoos to school and play Superfriends because they said too many kids were getting hurt.

When my dad was a kid the ONLY games they had was Cowboys and six shooters.

Kids today are more likly to violently have a cardiac arrest at age seventeen from doing nothing BUT play video games.

I don't play vid games much anymore, but years ago I liked to play Quake. If I recall, I was killing mostly monsters and aliens, which might make me prone to go postal on aliens should the Earth be invaded.

It all boils down to one simple thing...

The Almighty Dollar.

Any research showing that $MegaCorp's product may be "bad" will be given a negative spin as soon as possible, and moles will push the unknowing public in pooh-poohing the research, and making the researchers look like fools, and the people who are convinced by it are idiots.

An unwitting public blindly led by the powers in charge, who want only one thing. Money. (...and money is power.)


What are some of your first thoughts when you think of; homeschoolers, vegetarians, vegans, people with no TV, boycotting manufactured foods (especially Kraft), tree-huggers, and such...? Most people have it in their heads that these people are somehow.... weird... without even knowing why. Subconsciously, some of these people may feel insulted or attacked that someone is saying something they like is "bad". That's when they go on the warpath to spread nay-saying disinformation and chanting "bullcrap!" Say that enough times, everyone in earshot begins to agree.

Sheeple.

You know Im getting tired of every answer to the question "why"? as an adult is MONEY.

Makes my neverending quest for knowledge. . .want to eat some cheetos and watch reality TV,

Your example of the vegetarians and the no tv people. Theyre doing HEALTHY things, yet the people at large look at them as weirdos. Sounds like AS to me.

Is that what I have to do to assiimlate? Why is it that thinking as an individual is so WRONG? Isnt it what were taught as little kids?

Preaching to the choir. . . . .

A350XWB said:

I don't see why that would be the case. Sure you don't leave your chair... but you don't even get up to eat, sleep etc... I draw the line at the toilet though.
You don't eat much because you usually need both hands free.

TrueDave said:


I felt like that while playing Stuart Little on the Playstation 2 - and it's not violent... it's just that the other non-playing characters in the game cheat a bit.

Ummmmm.....HUH?

I'm sorry, but I don't see the relevance of this to what I said.

I felt like that while playing Stuart Little on the Playstation 2 - and it's not violent... it's just that the other non-playing characters in the game cheat a bit.[/quote]

Thats it in Tom and Jerry you could pick up something to hit another character with but you dropped it to easily while the non player characters were pros. It wasnt a difficulty that promoted me to try harder just not play.
Also Because of Rogue Squadron Im wishing they hadnt destroyed the damn AT ATs by flying around them with a cable. Ive had the game for years and cant get anywhere even with cheat codes(which never work)

Oh sorry to get off topic. Yes Video games definately make overweight people want to kill. Jeez When I first put a quarter in a Space Invaders machine over 25 years ago I never thought it would come to this.

Really from Pong to Vice City? Wow . . .

For the record the Columbine killers, so was the Omaha mall shooter, the Helsinki school shooter all got target practice via violent video games.
This article appears in the April 27, 2007 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Virginia Tech Killer Was
Another Video-Game Fanatic

by Michele Steinberg and Anton Chaitkin

Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche have been right since Columbine. You won't stop school shooting sprees until the multibillion-dollar video-"game"-killing-simulator industry is stopped from brainwashing youth.

On April 16, within moments of the news reports that mass shootings had occurred on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech, Lyndon LaRouche, chairman of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC), flagged the incident as a major national, and international security event. LaRouche noted that the event would shape policy in a major way—especially by those forces in the United States, around Vice President Dick Cheney, who would wish to use any type of security alert as a means to further their police-state powers to silence political opposition—as happened in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. (See LaRouche's statement.)

Within hours of the Virginia Tech killings—where 33 people died, and at least 15 more were injured—LaRouche outlined "critical questions" to be pursued in the investigation of the incident—questions that were framed by the campaign led by LaRouche, and his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity (BüSo) party of Germany to expose the video game industry for mental genocide, or "menticide," in both brainwashing young people with a cult of violence, and also training them to kill at the same time.

In the campaign that Mrs. LaRouche led in the aftermath of the Columbine killings in Littleton, Colorado in 1999, the video games were identified and exposed as what they really are: "killing simulators," that are used to produce shooters on "automatic pilot," in the military and in law enforcement.

Commenting on the Virginia Tech shootings, as the event was breaking, LaRouche stressed that the pattern and profile is what is important to unlock the truth behind the incident.
Were the shootings random, or aimed at specific targets?

What was the level of accuracy and skill: How many shots were fired at each victim; i.e., reports that most victims died from one shot indicates a very high level of accuracy.

Was there video or Internet shooting training involved? Helga Zepp-LaRouche's campaign against the youth violence had included interviews and discussions with retired Lt. Col. David Grossman (see article), who had identified that violent "point-and-shoot" video games not only had a mentally damaging effect on young people, but also sufficed as shooter training for rapid-fire, sequenced attacks on moving targets—exactly as occurred in Columbine; Paducah, Kentucky; Portland, Oregon; Erfurt, Germany; and the 1997 killings in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia. In all these cases, the video training played an important part.

Was the level of apparent planning, and skill reflective of a military and/or law enforcement training?

What were the flaws in the security procedures? It had been reported that there were bomb threats on the campus in the several weeks prior to the shooting—was this related?

Was there a breakdown of security procedures on April 16, after the first early morning shooting—and if so, why? At one point on the day of the shooting there was a "lockdown" of the campus, which was then lifted. In the span of two hours between the first killing at a dormitory, and the killing of more than 30 students and professors, at a classroom building about half-a-mile away, the assailant, Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old student on campus, was able to move between the two locations, unnoticed under the camouflage of the "normal" movement of students.

But that security breach could be the least of the problem.
Coverup of Video Training Continues

Less than 24 hours after LaRouche posed these questions, the Washington Post answered LaRouche's concerns in a very curious way. In a profile of shooter Cho Seung-Hui published on the Internet, Post reporters had obtained eyewitness information from his high school classmates, detailing that Cho had been a fanatical player of "shooter" video games, especially one called "Counterstrike."

But then, the reference to Counterstrike was stricken from the printed version of the article, and removed from later Internet postings, and Washington Post reporter David Cho, who had interviewed the high school associates of Cho Seung-Hui, was not even listed as an author or contributor of the final article.

What had happened is that the powerful "video-game industry" had struck—running a major campaign to remove any reference to the game Counterstrike or any other video-game references from the major media coverage.

For over a decade, the video-game industry has been able to protect itself—with the help of powerful elected officials, like Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, from interference in the brainwashing of youth.

In the day following the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings, the "industry" was at it again, protecting their operations, including with an all-out media and Internet assault on attorney Jack Thompson, who had exposed the Counterstrike connection to the current case, even as he had exposed earlier connections of the Counterstrike game to deadly school massacres.
LPAC's Record

Leading the fight again, is Lyndon LaRouche, through his political website, www.larouchepac.com, which immediately established the record. On April 18, LPAC published this item:

"The following was reported April 17, 2007 by Washington Post reporters Debbi Wilgoren, Sari Horwitz, and Robert E. Pierre, under the headline,

" 'Centreville Student Was Va. Tech Shooter':

" '...Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung-Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using....'

" 'Just such a phenomenon has been reported by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and by EIR, since 1999, in analyses and interviews with experts on mass shootings in recent years.'

"The above report was obtained by searching the washingtonpost.com website for the word "counterstrike." But this reportage was removed by the Post in the article as published—the article to which the reader is directed when clicking on the above search result. The final article is headlined,

" 'Student Wrote About Death and Spoke in Whispers, But No One Imagined What Cho Seung-Hui Would Do,' with the byline, 'by Ian Shapira and Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writers, Wednesday, April 18, 2007.'

"Executive Intelligence Review has established an international reputation for expertise on the subject of the role of these violent video-games in producing cold killers.

"In the case of the April 26, 2002 massacre at the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany, 16 people were killed before the shooter, Robert Steinhäuser, committed suicide. EIR reported May 10, 2002, the shooter's "mind had been conditioned by his obsession with killer video/computer games, such as "Ninja," 'Doom,' and 'Counterstrike' (produced by the notorious firm, Sierra Entertainment). When he carried out his massacre, he was dressed in black with a black mask, imitating the Ninja warriors found in such killer games. A police raid on Steinhäuser's room found many such killer video games."

These are not "games," they are "killing simulators," and training devices used by law enforcement SWAT teams, and military training. The role of video games in the Cho Seung-Hui shootings cannot be covered up.

The following special report from the archives of EIR, the Schiller Institute, and the election campaigns of candidate LaRouche, gives crucial background to policy makers, law enforcement, and families.

As LaRouche says in his April 18 statement, it is "Time To Deal With the Violent Videogame Lobby."

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3 ... ideos.html

One particularly strong flaw of this study is that it doesn't appear to exist. A tleast, I couldn't find it, not on Google, not on PubMed. In fact, this researcher 'Chou Yuan-hua' doesn't have anything in PubMed. Could be spelling though, please be more precise.




A correlation doesn't doesn't prove video games are a cause of violent behaviour. These games are chosen because they fulfill a need, be it for violence or accomplishment or the sense of being in control, or something else.



There is a general tendency in most area's of entertainment and media throughout society for more violence - and it's not children and adolescents that have accomplished this, but their parents and grandparents. Still not everyone exposed to



As is yours, sorry, but like all of us, you're reasoning from your own believes and common sense towards confirmation of those same believes. Nothing new.

While the Taipei study kicked off this thread, I don't consider it the definitive study. There is a large body of research on the effects of video games.

The study itself is not online (as far as I can tell; I dont' read Chinese). But there are a variety of Google references to it. Try this link:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&um=1& ... earch+News




That is the first time I have heard of violence being described as a need. What is the Recommended Daily Allowance for violence?

It is true that correlation does not always equate to causation, and that caution is needed for making conclusions based on correlation. But correlational studies can prove causation if they are well designed. And the research goes beyond correlational studies. There are experimental studies where increasing the time spent playing violent games is shown to increase hostility.




No, I originally had no objections to violent video games. Then I read the research. I have provided links to sites that go beyond beliefs. It is the people that deny that there are negative effects that limit themselves to abstract reasoning that is detached from the research.



People with AS have problems in deciphering the intent of others. People who strengthen the violence circuits in their brain are far more likely to interpret ambiguous signals as hostile. The result is increased social dysfunction. This is a real issue for the AS community.

I know that playing video games on a daily basis during a school year can cause someone to forget all the material that he had to study or memorize for school and do poorly on exams.

But can it psychologically damage one's brain?...........B.S.