Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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BOGGLES THE MIND

30th June 2005

Dr. Klaus Mathiak, who led a team of neuroscientists at the German University of Aachen was researching violence in games. He placed male participants in an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machine and had them play an FPS.   During a fight in the game, parts of the brain which deal with emotion, including the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex, were shut down. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is used in emotion, as is the amygdala. However, the ACC is especially used to generate empathy, allowing you to imagine how others are feeling. In the case of violence, the ACC activity is suppressed, which allows you to perform the acts without feeling, hence Dr Niels Birbaumer, from the University of Tübingen in Germany, suggesting that this turns people into cold-blooded, violent creatures.

This sounds convincing and it certainly makes sense given the current knowledge. Supporting evidence is that people who think about doing violent acts have displayed the same inhibitory ACC characteristic in a similar fMRI scan. However, current thinking on the role of the little spindle-shaped collection of neurons is vast. So could the observed effect mean something else entirely?   This is especially pertinent because there is little conflict between the many views for the functional specialisation of the ACC. This suggests that it can play a role in all those the processes. These applications are varied and range from acting as an interface between cognitive (thought processes) and emotion processing areas of the brain, to a mechanism that forces action re-evalution when you have made an error. It leads many to believe that this single apparatus has a certain function that can be brought to bear in many situations. These could be as varied as remembering and avoiding dangerous situations or re-evaluating your playing strategy in poker.

So, while I have little reason to doubt Mathiak’s findings (despite him only using 18 participants), I’d like to think that there is an alternate explanation for their presence, other than ‘violent games stimulate the same parts of the brain as actual violence’. You have to look to see what advantage it would confer the player not to have the ACC operating and to do that you need to examine the various roles that the ACC can perform.   I believe that there are three possible areas for further research to clarify Mathiak’s fMRI data. I will cover one in this entry and the other two in further updates.

An Alternative Theory   According to some researchers, the ACC has a critical role to play in harmonising the body’s physical response to hard exercise, be that mental or physical. When playing games, the user is well aware that they are sat down with a pad in their hands, but the intensity of the situation can stimulate somatic responses such as raised heartrate, increased perspiration etc. as you would have if you were angry or scared.

When playing a game, you know that you are not moving and competing physically, even if physiological feedback suggests otherwise. It is possible that the ACC is being inhibited to prevent the adrenalin rush of the gameplay from affecting your cognition, as a learned response.   Psychologists have long recognised a link between emotion and the physiological response to it. Many say that the physiological response comes first and then we discover what the situation/emotion is later. This is known as the, James-Lange theory of emotion. More recent theories include the Cannon-Baird theory which is the other way around (more cognition oriented).

James- Lange Theory

Cannon-Baird Theory

In a way they are both right. There are two classic experiments that investigate these two theories of emotion. They seek to find out whether our perception of the activation of the autonomic nervous system triggers the experience of emotion or vice versa.   Misattribution Theory was first explored in Dutton & Aron’s 1974 Two Bridges experiment. Male participants are asked to walk across the Capilano Canyon suspension bridge in Vancouver. Others are asked to walk over a low bridge. Although the men are told that they are being asked about creativity and scenery, they are actually being tested on their emotions. The woman interviewing them subtly drops them her phone number in the middle of the questions. The same woman does the interviews on both the low and high bridges.

Walk on High bridge   Height induces fast heart rate See woman High heart rate is confused for attraction   60% Use the number and call back

Walk on low bridge   Low bridge, normal heart rate See woman No incidental somatic interference   30% Pick up the phone.

From this you can conclude that the symptoms of fear are confused with the symptoms of arousal: fast heart rate, sweating etc. It is very easy to confuse between one physiological reaction with several different interpretations, sometimes settling on ones that are entirely inappropriate.   Similarly, Schachter & Singer (1962) exploited the fact that you could provoke physiological symptoms with a shot of adrenaline. The set-up was a doctor’s waiting room where the participants were told they were being given a shot of a new vitamin. Some were told that there would be a physical reaction and others told nothing. While they were waiting they had to fill out a questionnaire that asks increasingly insulting questions. Also in the room is a stooge, who gets progressively angrier until he tears up the paper and storms out.

Those told to expect the correct symptoms of adrenaline did not get angry, whilst those who did not logically expect to have a raised heart-rate and fast breathing mistakenly assigned this feeling to being angry and they too became angry. You can conclude that the lack of an obvious stimulus for the somatic conditions forced the participant's brain to search for a reason so that the feedback it received could tie together into a whole.   It is a small step to include the ACC into the equation here, given that it is thought to be the link that allows cognitive processing of the physical symptoms. Schachter & Singer's experiment shows that when there is no obvious cause for a physiological reaction that one can be falsely assigned. Dutton & Aron’s investigation shows that even if there is a logical explanation for the symptoms, these can still be misinterpreted.     Testing The Alternative Theory   The idea here is to repeat Schachter and Singer’s experiment, but under slightly different conditions, where the patient is in an fMRI. Before the patient goes into the machine, a stooge undergoes the tests while the participant waits. It is explained to them that they are in the room so that they can see what will happen, so as not to worry about the process.

When it is their turn in the machine, a new stooge enters to wait and look. The stooge gets increasingly angry at having to wait and wait. The technician makes sure that the waiting period is the same as it was for the participant.   While the participant is in the machine we would expect the one who received adrenaline and was explained the situation to have their ACC inhibited, but not so in the other group of participants.   This would show that the ACC not only plays a part in mediating between physiological states and emotion, but that it can be shut down to prevent false cases. This paves the way for arguing that the ACC is shut down in action gamers to prevent the increased heart rate from falsely affecting their emotions.

Conclusion   These experiments have not been researched in detail. They are merely an indicator to show that conclusions reached through research can yield interesting correlations. However, a correlation cannot establish causation. In fact, when the brain is such a complex and misunderstood entity and violent games such an emotive issue, illusory correlations abound.   While Dr. Mathiak’s findings are interesting, do not take his findings to heart just yet. Games related psychological research has a long way to go in ‘proving’ anything at all.

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