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The ubiquity of video game playing by teenagers supports the need to investigate the games' effects on ventral striatal reward areas of the brain. These 154 healthy 14-year-olds from Berlin middle schools underwent structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI and fMRI, respectively) while performing two gambling tasks that allowed researchers to measure latency to placing bets and brain activations during positive and negative feedback about the success of the bets.
The researchers grouped the students by their self-reported time spent video gaming (either below or above the median of 9 hours weekly). There were 76 high-frequency players (52 boys) and 78 low-frequency players (20 boys).
On sMRI, high-frequency players had larger…