 Now this is really cool Just for the type of studying going on here So there was a new study in Canada from the University of Montreal and they were trying to figure out how memory is affected by Video games, you know, there's a lot of studies out there showing the impacts of video games in the brain So I'm gonna say they make you more violent. They make you less violent. This isn't about violence This is just about pure memory and what video games can do to help or hurt your memory Now in order to do this study they took 51 men and 46 women so I said about a hundred people and had them play 90 hours of screen time with call of duty kill zone and Borderlands to 90 hours total between all those games and Then 90 hours of various 3d Mario games now before they did this they wanted to establish how their memories worked So in to do this you had to figure how they learned how did they put things in their memory to figure out? So before they did this they were trying to figure out who you know who were spatial learners and who were response learners and spatial learners essentially look at what's around them and memorize specific landmarks whereas Response learners would do things like just memorize what path they went down by memorizing the amount of turns Because they had to solve a maze on a computer before they could play the games to determine Which type of learner they are now this is important because This now delves deep into What these games had an effect on the different types of learners? So once the learning strategy was established participants then began playing the action in 3d platform video games The same amount of screen time on each produced very different effects on the brain 90 hours of playing action games led to a hippocampal atrophy in response learners Which isn't good While 90 hours of playing 3d games and remember these are the Mario games led to increased gray matter Within the hippocampal memory system of all participants. So what's cool is that Mario? Even though it's not You know, this is one study It doesn't matter what type of learner you are Mario literally increased gray matter and gray matter is huge for memory So it's it's hugely important for us to maintain gray matter So the idea then at least in this one study Which needs to be replicated and replicated again and again and again over and over over again to prove These are not just one-off results with these 96 or so people It's very interesting hearing that Mario of all things no matter how you learn is good for your brain Everyone go on by Super Mario Odyssey and play it until you die That that's almost what I get out of this, but let's just continue with the study So it says because spatial strategies were shown to be associated with increase in hippocampal gray matter during video game playing It remains possible that response learners could be encouraged to use spatial strategies to counteract against negative effects on the Hippocampal system and I'll put a link down to this in the description of the study because it gives you a suggestion to You know FPS makers and action game makers how they could design their games slightly differently to encourage the other type of memory use because Like everything the brain can be trained right brain training ha ha 3ds or whatever But you can actually train your brain to learn things in a specific way Even if that's not your usual way of handling it So it could encourage that type of learning in those action games now Let's set all of that aside for now And just consider what this study is showing out of Canada It is showing that for people who learn things and remember things in a certain way FPS games are bad for them Not bad for them in that it changes their behaviors, but it decreases their gray matter Which affects their memory specifically the short-term memory whereas for you know Mario players We have apparently a better short-term memory Because we play Mario games because of how Mario games make us think and how it works our brain how it exercises it and Maybe this explains why some Nintendo fans have a good memory. I have no idea Maybe a lot of sports athletes should look into playing Mario games when they retire Especially if they have like CTE issues play Mario games that increases your gray matter Which is healthy for you. You want a high level of gray matter This is you're not gonna forget where your keys are you're not gonna forget to pick up your kids You're not gonna forget to do a lot of things every single day that sometimes people forget it could actually help put up put off Potentially if this study can be recreated this could help stave off all timers and other things like we're looking at how Mario and games like it it could positively impact people's brains to a point where Everyone's gonna want to play it because it's gonna give you a healthier longer life for your brain That is awesome and again This is just one study and this isn't me trying to trash on FPS games. I play Splatoon. Come on It's an FPS game. Basically. I mean, I know it's a third person but it's an action game right and a game like Splatoon would obviously Probably fall on the action side of the scale. So, you know, there's there's pros and cons to this But it's crazy that every single person no matter the memory style Mario help them What this means right now is little outside of the fact that apparently If this can be replicated and keeps having this 100% rate with Mario Mario helps you with your memory. This is just insane and I'm trying not to overblow it But this is one of the first studies I've seen of video games that Wasn't done with an agenda a lot of studies I read about video games are Targeting them to find out something to find something that supports whatever that they are seeking and a lot of times It's you know, it's like the media wants to say that video games increase violence and teenagers So their studies are focused around trying to find ways that you're trying to find connections that make that possible And then you have people who want to prove that video games don't have an impact on behavior of teenagers and so then they Work and focus on studies that might help prove that and cherry-pick statistics out that help that case What I like about this study is it's not about any of that it's setting aside all the mumbo-jumbo of You know biases towards wanting to paint video games in a certain light instead they're just examining how video games affect gray matter in our memory and This is just so cool to have this kind of unbiased thing out there And again, I'm not saying FPS games are terrible for your brain stop playing them And if anything that this just shows that you should probably have a balance in your gaming diet, right? You play a lot of FPS games be sure you're playing some platformers as well man play some some strategy games mix it up Don't just be someone who plays a certain style of game all the time To me I think that's the best way you can have a healthy brain if you would like to use video games to keep exercising your brain and potentially get more gray matter and again I'm not a scientist so like this isn't like advice that oh my gosh, it's scientifically proven I mean there's one study that shows Mario games are awesome for your brain But it's just one study and as always too much of anything can be bad for you I don't know if there's such thing as too much gray matter, but too much video games could cause other issues You know I issues and Who knows radiation weird TV give you cancer be on beats me there's radiation everywhere. So It's just a very interesting study, and I'm hoping that more universities Worldwide start doing a similar study to this to further see how different types and different genres of video games and different video game franchises can affect you because right now Mario 100% positive kill zone call of duty and you know Borderlands 2 for like half a people in the world bad It's just a very interesting study And I wanted to bring this up because I just think this is such a cool thing That's being researched for like the first time something scientific and really cool is being looked into how video games affect people Anyways, I'm Nathaniel Rufflejant from Nintendo Prime if you like this video You know what to do if you dislike this video hit that dislike button. Otherwise folks I will just catch you in the next one