Male brains get off on video games

A TEAM of computer game playing boffins have worked out that male brains are 'rewarded' by playing such games.

Stanford University School of Medicine's Allan Reiss and his fellow boffins have discovered that while women can take or leave video games there is a part of the male brain which finds them more addictive than crack.

When a bloke plays Halo 3 part of his brain that generates rewarding feelings is more activated in men than women.

In the Journal of Psychiatric Research, which we get for the second hand brains for sale column, he penned that gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become 'hooked' on video games than females.

This is Reiss's second go at proving that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. He managed to prove that men and women process humour differently last year.

In this study he found that although women 'got the game' and were motivated to succeed. Blokes were a lot more interested.

After opening up the bonnet they scanned the brain for intelligent life and found that when playing participants' mesocorticolimbic centre was activated.

Blokes' brains apparently were glowing like a Christmas tree and other reward parts of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex, seemed to be active too.

Reise reckons it is all about acquiring territory as men are more intrinsically territorial. Most of the computer games that are really popular with males are territory and aggression-type games.

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