The DS has been getting a lot of media attention recently on major venues such as NPR, thanks in no small part to non-traditional “games” like Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. But most articles have tended to gloss over how exactly the partnership between Nintendo, a major software developer, and Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, an eminent Japanese brain researcher, came about. Interestingly enough, about 5 years ago Dr. Kawashima was studying the effects of video games on brain development

Kawashima, in need of funding for his research, originally decided to investigate the levels of brain activity in children playing video games expecting to find that his research would be a boon to manufacturers…

Using the most sophisticated technology available, the level of brain activity was measured in hundreds of teenagers playing a Nintendo game and compared to the brain scans of other students doing a simple, repetitive arithmetical exercise. To the surprise of brain-mapping expert Professor Ryuta Kawashima and his team at Tohoku University in Japan, it was found that the computer game only stimulated activity in the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement….

Kawashima (2001):

‘The implications are very serious for an increasingly violent society and these students will be doing more and more bad things if they are playing games and not doing other things like reading aloud or learning arithmetic.’

Instead of suing Kawashima (as most companies would probably do), Nintendo instead offered Kawashima the chance to develop his own game - a move that appears to be paying off!

Read More | The Observer 2001 ‘Computer Games Stunt Teen Brains’