Connect with us

Childhood ‘Pokémon’ Players May Have Developed Specialized Brain Functions

 

I just thought being able to name and type any Pokémon on sight was a neat trick, not a developed skill.

I have accrued my fair share of Pokémon memories over the year. My first Squirtle and the mighty Blastoise it became, my terrifying tag-team of Staraptor and Krookodile, and my pulse pounding Metagross VS Metagross duel with Steven Stone, to name a few. As it turns out, twenty-plus years of playing Pokémon games has apparently left a lasting impact on my mind. No, not some kind of brain deficiency like all those other bogus studies claim, but something a little more remarkable.

According to a study from the University of California published in Nature Human Behavior, adults who invested a lot of time into something when they were young develop a special pocket of neurons in their temporal lobe packed with info related to that subject. This has actually been noted in similar studies; fixation on certain topics fosters the creation and distribution of grey matter. This is particularly evident with Pokémon because it’s a heavily visual subject, but theoretically, this little neuron pouch can contain info on any singular topic, like card tricks, specialized motor skills, or even celebrity histories. No joke, they’ve found people with clusters dedicated to Jennifer Aniston.

Jesse Gomez, who co-authored the study, has termed this phenomenon as the “eccentricity bias.” It’s a very specific brain node that only lights up when presented with a particular stimulus. “Because Pokémon are very small and viewed with our central vision most of the time, they occupy a small portion in the central retina when we’re looking at them,” Gomez explained. I guess the “power that’s inside” that the old Pokémon theme sang about was referring to specialized brain development. Who knew?

Connect