If Pokemon Red and Blue used to be your favorite game when you were a child, and you used to hide under your pillow to play it past your bedtime, it means that Pikachu and the gang have, literally and it was proven, a small place in your brain.
According to some researchers from Standford University, seeing images of the series’ characters can trigger the brain of people who used to play Pokemon games for hours as kids, those receiving favorable responses. The study was conducted of such excessive players and on people who had no idea what the series was about, and it was proved that Pokemon fans responded more.
The same reactions in the brain have been observed in those participants who had no relation with the Pokemon games.
Playing Pokemon Games As A Kid Might Activate Some Special Brain Regions
During the test, experts were surprised to discover that when seeing a picture of a character in the Pokemon games, same reactions could be seen in the same area of the brain of the participant without any relation with the games. The occipitotemporal sulcus is where images of animals form and as Pokemon games’ characters resemble those, that was also the place where activity was noticed. Faces and words are stored by our brains in the same way, this organ choosing what to remember and what to forget.
Development can happen in some areas of the brain if children are exposed to Pokemon games. In addition to that, the study also used this to help make a difference between the peripheral and central vision. A Game Boy screen is quite small, and only a tiny part of the player’s view is taken up by the Pokémon characters. With that being said, the role of the visual cortex includes some preferential brain activations.
