Image: Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

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Brain scans reveal how gamers justify violence

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A new study has mapped the brain activity of people as they commit graphic acts of violence in a video game, and the results reveal for
the first time that a complex decision-making process based on morality is at play, even if the players arent aware of it.

The study, conducted by researchers from the social neuroscience laboratory at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, recruited 48
male and female volunteers, and asked them to play a series of first-person shooters in which they were required to kill both innocent
civilians and enemy soldiers. The volunteers brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices as they
played.

"In normal everyday situations, people wouldn't go out and harm other people," lead researcher Pascal Molenberghs told Jessica Kidd at
ABC News. "But in certain situations, like, for example, during war, they have often no problems with just killing other people."

While "no problems" seems a little harsh - Im sure most soldiers who have killed another human being, enemy soldier or not, are
affected by it - understanding how the brain reacts to this act when committed in a video game could help us to better understand what
goes on in the brains of those who do it in real life.

Looking at the brain scans, Molenberghs team found that his volunteers had more activity in the lateral (or side) parts of their
orbitofrontal cortex when they were killing innocent civilians (unjustified) than when they were killing enemy soldiers (justified). This region
in the brain is believed to play a crucial role in unconscious decision-making and conflict resolution, and previous studies have found that
if it's damaged in some way, people can have difficulty controlling their anger, or responding to anger in others.

That it fired up when the volunteers were doing something they knew to be morally questionable suggests that their brains were working
harder to reconcile their actions. When they believed the violence was justified, their brains settled down and made it easier for them to
get the job done. "When they were shooting innocent civilians, this brain area became very active," Molenberghs told Kidd. "But
whenever they were shooting the soldiers, this area was not active at all."

The results have been published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

What was surprising to the researchers was how the volunteers were able to so seamlessly switch from feeling slightly bad about killing
civilians - even subconsciously - to not feeling anything at all when they were killing the enemy soldiers, Kidd reports.

Molenberghs explains that this ease of switching could give researchers a better understanding of how people, whether consuming
violent media or committing true violent acts, can become desensitised:

"People can quite easily switch off this brain area which allows them to commit violence without feeling bad about it. Theres not much
complex reasoning involved in the process, so it's a very implicit kind of a process that people can quite easily switch off.

Some people seem to have problems switching back because they have learned over a very long period to switch off their emotions.
If they then return to a normal situation where they don't fear for their lives, they have problems trying to switch it on again."

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If we understand how violent criminals and sociopaths become desensitised, making it easier for them to commit crimes without
remorse, says Molenberghs, well be better placed to come up with strategies for treating this.

Brb, going to find a spare scientist and an fMRI machine to find out exactly what happens in my brain when I rule at Dark Souls so
scientists can bottle it and sell it back to me.

Source: ABC News

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