Artifact 1

"Video violence desensitizes brain.(Mass Media)" USA Today (Magazine) 134.2731 (April 2006): 13(2). Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 6 Dec. 2006 http://find.galenet.com/ips/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&docId=A144047937&source=gale&srcprod=SRCG&userGroupName=elli29753&version=1.0.

This is my first artifact. I learned what doctors thought about video games. They did some research on what video games do to people:

"'Children respond to video violence by activating areas of the brain involved in fear responses,' Murray explains. 'The amygdala--the organ in the brain that recognizes threat in the environment and prepares the body for fight or flight--is activated, along with the posterior cingulate, an area of the brain that stores traumatic events for long-term memory, such as that found in post-traumatic stress disorder victims of violence.'"
"there also was evidence of activation of the brain's premotor cortex, indicating that the children were attempting to imitate the boxing scenes on the video they were viewing. "

They did a study on adults that play a lot of video games. Which the results could change the point of view some people have about video games:

"In another study, young males played a violent video game while they were resting in an MRI machine. The adult males, 18-26 years old, were experienced video game players who engaged in the activity, on average, about 15 hours each week. When viewing the most violent sections of the video game, as contrasted to those that involved searching for a target rather than active violence, there were changes in an area of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex, that indicated a separation of thinking or judgment vs. emotion. This suggests that the repeated playing of violent video interactions leads to a desensitization to the infliction of pain and suffering as portrayed in the video game. "

Desensitization means the elimination or reduction of natural or acquired reactivity or sensitivity to an external stimulus, as an allergen.

The conclusion (their point of view) that doctors made was that video games do affect children and adults in a bad way. And they think that this does cause big source of violence in society.

"'Basically, this new research on brain responses to viewing violence begins to identify how and where the neurological processes of children and young adults are modified by the experience of viewing violence,' Murray concludes. 'When added to the behavioral research that has accumulated over the past half century, we now know that the effects of so-called 'entertainment' violence are far from entertaining. This is a serious source of violence in society.'"

Some questions:
1. Do all (or most) doctors feel this way about video games?
2. How did these findings effect other people's opinion?
3. Do you think that these consequences of playing violent video games is enough to stop everyone (mostly everyone) from playing them?