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Guys and Their Video Games

It's no surprise that men are more into video games than women, it's science!

Fumiko Hoeft, a researcher at Stanford University, conducted a study comparing men and women's brain activity while playing a video game.

Using an MRI scanner, Hoeft observed the participants as they played a game requiring them to keep balls from hitting a wall in the center of the computer.

He found that while all participants showed activity in regions of the brain associated with reward and addiction, men's brains showed considerably greater activity overall.

The possible reason: men's brains are wired to get excited about the challenge of gaining or losing territory, making them much more territorial than women. This could explain why guys are drawn to games related to sports or war, where the object is to vanquish your opponent and conquer their territory.

Though there may be some video games that women enjoy more than men, territoriality may help explain why men are more easily engrossed in many video games than women.

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