PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 4 (UPI) -- A U.S study found video games appear to activate a greater level of rewarding feelings in the brain for men than women.
Dr. Allan Reiss of the Stanford University School of Medicine said the gender differences may help explain why males are more likely to become addicted to video games than women, the university said Monday in a news release.
The study, published online in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, observed 11 men and 11 women playing 24-second intervals of a video game while hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine that produces a dynamic image of which parts of the brain are working during a given activity.
The researchers said both men and women showed activation in the brain's mesocorticolimbic center, the region typically associated with reward and addiction. Male brains, however, showed much greater activation. The amount of activation was correlated with how much territory they gained.
"I think it's fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial," Reiss said in a statement. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species -- they're the males."
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