Study: Children's brains may benefit from video games

However, a sizable recent US study that was published in JAMA Network Open on Monday suggests there might possibly be cognitive advantages to the well-liked activity.

Bader Chaarani, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, said that as a passionate gamer and expert in neuroimagery, he was immediately drawn to the subject.

Prior studies have concentrated on the negative impacts of gaming, connecting it to depression and an increase in violence.

However, the very small participant numbers in these research, particularly those involving brain imaging, were a limitation, according to Charaani.

Data from the extensive and ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health, were examined by Chaarani and colleagues for the new study.

Around 2,000 nine- and ten-year-old children, divided into two groups: those who never played games and those who played for three hours or more a day, were examined for survey responses, cognitive test scores, and brain imaging.

This limit was set since it goes beyond the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation for older children about screen usage, which is one or two hours of video games per day.