Video games can save lives and more…
Religion & Liberty Online

Video games can save lives and more…

Not directly, of course, but the implication of a recent story from NPR’s Future Tense is that video games have a positive stimulative effect on doctors who are about to perform surgery.

A new study is out, and according to FT, “Surgeons who played games for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors.” The study focused on a particular type of surgery, specifically “laparoscopic” procedures. Again, from FT, “The results supported findings from a smaller study in 2003, which showed that doctors who grew up playing video games tended to be more efficient and less error-prone in laparoscopic training drills.” You can hear the story in RealMedia here.

The increase of dopamine associated with playing video games can help establish learning patterns. You heard it here first: students who play video games for 20 minutes immediately preceding quizzes, tests, midterms, and exams will perform better. Video games could “augment” educational achievement.

This latter claim would need to be studied and proven, of course. It seems to me that today’s youth already play significant amounts of video games. It may well be that long-term and extended durations of video game play might have adverse effects on learning patterns as wel. This means that we’d need to look for a mediating time frame, within which the brain is stimulated and activated but does not suffer from more adverse effects.

Maybe the circumscribed use of video games can be part of the solution to the problem Anthony Bradley identifies.

Update: “The Brain Workout: In praise of video games,” OpinionJournal, by Brian C. Anderson: “Video games can also exercise the brain in remarkable ways.”

Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. He has previously held research positions at the Acton Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and has authored multiple books, including a forthcoming introduction to the public theology of Abraham Kuyper. Working with Lexham Press, he served as a general editor for the 12 volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, and his research can be found in publications including Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Religion, Scottish Journal of Theology, Reformation & Renaissance Review, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Faith & Economics, and Calvin Theological Journal. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.