Fans play video games at the premiere of the video game ''Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3'' in Los Angeles, California September 2, 2011. 
 
 LONDON | 
 
 LONDON (Reuters) - Teenagers who spend a lot of time on video-games have different structures and activity levels in areas of the brain that are linked to reward, scientists have found, suggesting they get more out of gaming than people who tend to play less. 
 
 In a study published in the Translational Psychiatry journal on Tuesday, researchers analyzed MRI scans of more than 150 14-year-olds who played video-games either moderately or a lot, and found the frequent gamers had a higher volume of grey matter in a key part of their brains. 
 
 Previous studies have shown a link between the dopamine-related ventral striatum, a structure of the brain's reward system, and video-gaming or computer gambling, but this is the first to look at brain structure and volume. 
 
 "These findings demonstrate that the ventral striatum plays a significant role in excessive video-game playing and contributes to our understanding of behavioral addiction," Simone Kuehn of Belgium's Ghent University and Juergen Gallinat of Germany's Charite University Medicine wrote in their study 
 
 Video-gaming has become hugely popular in recent years, particularly among teenagers. The average weekly usage in this experiment was around 12 hours a week. 
 
 There is an ongoing debate among doctors and researchers about whether excessive video-gaming should be recognized as an addiction and seen as a form of mental disorder. 
 
 While the German researchers found keen gamers had structural differences in their brains compared to those who played less frequently, they were not able to say whether this was a cause of eagerness to play video-games or a change that had come about as a result of their habit. 
 
 Henrietta Bowden-Jones of the neuroscience division at Imperial College London said the findings were highly relevant to clinicians because they "further close the gap" between video-gaming and other addictions, giving specialists a better understanding of possible long-term treatment options. 
 
 "The exciting next step will be to determine, as with other addictions, whether volumetric differences are a cause or effect of excessive human behavior," she said in an emailed comment about the study. 
 
 Luke Clark of Cambridge University's department of Experimental Psychology said the findings were "really provocative, because this is a central hub in the brain's motivational system and dopamine pathway." 
 
 "The burning question...is whether the structural difference is a change caused by the frequent game play, or whether individual differences in this system naturally dispose some people to more excessive play," he said. "For teenagers, parents, and clinicians to make sense of this finding, we need research monitoring brain structure over time." 
 
 (Editing by Paul Casciato) ||||| Fourteen-year-olds who were frequent video gamers had more gray matter in the rewards center of the brain than peers who didn't play video games as much -- suggesting that gaming may be correlated to changes in the brain much as addictions are.European scientists reported the discovery Tuesday in the journal Translational Psychiatry . Psychologist Simone Kuhn of Ghent University in Belgium and colleagues recruited 154 healthy 14-year-olds in Berlin and divided them into two groups. Twenty-four girls and 52 boys were frequent gamers who played at least nine hours of video games each week. Fifty-eight girls and 20 boys were infrequent gamers, who played less than nine hours a week.Structural magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ) showed differences in the test subjects' brains. Frequent gamers had more gray matter in a portion of the brain known as the left ventral striatum, which affects the interplay of emotions and behavior. Previous research identified striatal function as a "core candidate promoting addictive behavior," the authors wrote.Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the team also observed changes in the kids' brains as they participated in a task that simulated anticipating and receiving a reward. They found that frequent gamers had greater brain activity when they were given feedback that they were losing. This is similar to a response seen in addicted gamblers, the authors noted, who have increased levels of the the brain chemical dopamine in the ventral striatum when they are losing money.The authors wrote that their study is the first to correlate changes in brain structures with video gaming. They couldn't determine if the frequent gamers' brains grew larger as a result of playing video games or if those kids were attracted to gaming because that part of their brain was enlarged in the first place; scientists will need to measure the effects of video gaming on structures in the brain over time to figure that out.But either way, discovering the link between brain structure and video games could help researchers understand the role of the brain in addictive behaviors, they wrote."If the striatal differences observed in the current study are indeed an effect of gaming, video gaming might post an interesting option to explore structural changes in addiction in future studies in the absence of any neurotoxic substances," they noted.The study is available at the Translational Psychiatry website Return to the Booster Shots blog
– This is your brain on videogames: The brains of hardcore gamers are wired differently than those who rarely play video games, according to a new study. Researchers who scanned the brains of more than 150 14-year-olds found that the brain's "reward hub"—which plays a role in addiction—was bigger in frequent gamers, as it is in gambling addicts, the Los Angeles Times reports. The researchers couldn't determine whether gaming changed the brain, or whether having a certain brain structure made people likelier to enjoy gaming. The results are "really provocative, because this is a central hub in the brain's motivational system and dopamine pathway," a researcher at Cambridge's department of experimental psychology tells Reuters. "The burning question is whether the structural difference is a change caused by the frequent game play, or whether individual differences in this system naturally dispose some people to more excessive play," he says. "For teenagers, parents, and clinicians to make sense of this finding, we need research monitoring brain structure over time."