Researchers are Using POKEMON to Study Brains

Detective Pikachu is not the only reason that Pokémon has been popping up on my news feed. It turns out that researchers are using Pokémon from the original Red and Blue games to study brains!

Stanford researchers have used Pokémon fans to help further their studies into how the human brain develops and becomes organized. I don’t want to bore you with too much, but the research team’s findings support the idea that early childhood exposure to stimuli is key for the development of certain brain areas.

The more experience a person had playing Pokémon, the stronger the reaction in the brain. This could help researchers explain and better understand how dyslexia or other conditions develop.

You can learn a bit more in the video below.

Adults who played Pokémon video games extensively as children have a brain region that responds preferentially to images of Pikachu and other characters from the series. The findings, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, help shed light on mysteries about our visual system.