Both Active & Sham Play Improve Visuo-Motor Skills

Article: Scientists use video games to shed light on the link between motor activity and vision
Source: City College of New York in PsyPost, via Technology Networks
Published: June 3, 2021

Alpha desynchronization over motor cortex
during active and sham play

Vision guides movement. But input from the motor cortex may also guide the visual system. To explore the connection, the authors designed an experiment with three scenarios: (1) "active play" of a racing video game with traditional hand controls, (2) "sham play" in which participants were made to believe they were controlling the video game with their brain activity, (3) and "passive viewing" of a prerecorded playback of the video game. Because movement (both real and imagined) also produces increased attention that could affect changes in visual processing, the authors developed a second study in which participants were asked to count the appearance of specific images on the screen while passively viewing the game. Electroencephalography (EEG) of alpha-band (8–12 Hz) activity, which appear before performing motor tasks, showed reduced correlation during passive viewing, but no difference between active and sham play, indicating recruitment of the motor cortex despite the absence of overt movement. Counting showed weak evidence, less than statistical significance, that attention was not responsible for the observed differences. The latter finding are likely due to the very small sample size of only 24 participants, of which only one-third were assigned to the sham task. Despite this limitation, the study provides some evidence for the effect of both active and sham play in eliciting visual evoked potentials as compared to passive viewing in support of the view that visual signals are enhanced during movement. That is, motion might also guide vision. Future studies with larger population sizes would provide greater statistical significance.

My rating of this study: ⭐

Ki JJ, Parra LC and Dmochowski JP. "Visually evoked responses are enhanced when engaging in a video game." European Journal of Neuroscience.  52(12):4695-4708. December 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.14924