Scientists report that they can predict who will improve
most on an unfamiliar video game by looking at their brain waves.
They describe their findings in a paper in the journal
Psychophysiology.
The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) to peek at
electrical activity in the brains of 39 study subjects before they trained on
Space Fortress, a video game developed for cognitive research. The subjects
whose brain waves oscillated most powerfully in the alpha spectrum (about 10
times per second, or 10 hertz) when measured at the front of the head tended to
learn at a faster rate than those whose brain waves oscillated with less power,
the researchers found. None of the subjects were daily video game players.