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Internet addiction has been associated with disrupted white-matter integrity (J Biomed Biotechnol 2012; 2012:854524), but similar studies of video gaming have not previously been conducted. To fill this knowledge gap, investigators studied self-reported weekday video game use and brain microstructure in 240 children in Japan (126 girls; age range, 6–18 years; mean, 12 years).
Choices on the video-gaming scale ranged from none to ≥4 hours. Parents reported video-gaming hours in children in grade 4 and younger. Analyses controlled for demographic factors (e.g., rural or urban residence and parental income).
More hours of video gaming were associated with lower verbal IQ and, on diffusion tensor imaging in 95 boys and 94 girls, with greater mean…