Our parents have been banging on about this for years, insisting that all that time we spend playing “TV games” is bad for us. Fortunately, there has been little in the way of empirical evidence over the years to suggest that playing games has any direct and serious affect on our brains.

However, a study conducted by the Indiana University School of Medicine has found a direct correlation between playing violent video games and altered brain functioning.

The research is being presented this week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago. The researchers studied 22 healthy men aged between 18 and 29. All of the men were given fMRI scans before being split into two groups. One group of men was to play 10 hours of a violent video game over the space of one week. The other group was instructed not to play video games.

After a week the group of gamers had their brains re-scanned, and it was discovered that their brains showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe [related to reward and motivation] during an emotional task, and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex [responsible for empathy and emotive response] during the counting task, in comparison to their results prior to spending the week playing games.

So basically, what should have evoked an emotional response, didn’t.

The game group was tested again after a second week, where it was discovered that their brain activity had mostly normalized. “The activation returned toward baseline but did not completely normalize. We don’t know how long the effect lasts for those who play longer,” says study co-author Dr. Vincent Mathews.

The findings suggest that games have a direct affect on brain functioning in the short-term, but also that they may have less drastic affects over more extended periods of time. “These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning,” said lead author Yang Wang, assistant research professor in the school’s department of radiology and imaging sciences.

The part of the brain which video games were shown to affect is involved in “inhibition and emotional modulation.” According to Wang, other studies have found that games may lead to increased levels of aggression. He believes that his research provides a physiological explanation for those findings.