Tetris Improves Your Brain 145
An anonymous reader writes "Playing Tetris increases the density of the cortex and improves the efficiency of some parts of the brain, according to researchers investigating video games and other complex spatial tasks." Unfortunately, storing a half million copies of the song negates any practical functional gains beyond loading your trunk very efficiently.
Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Really (Score:5, Interesting)
Playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with, says a new study to be published later this week.
So you're saying you had control groups of people that played other video games and Tetris showed a difference? Or a control group studying chess? I suspect the title of this article should be "Puzzles Improve Your Brain."
This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a "challenging visuospatial task" like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity.
So you're saying this is akin to jamming the square block in the square hole and the triangle block in the triangle hole? Or, really, any sort of two dimensional puzzles like the mazes on the back of tray mats at a restaurant? Or maybe even -- *gasp* -- any game portrayed on a 2D surface like a TV or computer screen?
The study, funded by Tetris' makers ...
I understand now.
The study's subjects, a group of adolescent girls, underwent MRI scans before and after a three-month Tetris practice period.
The pretty pictures wouldn't happen to be statistically erroneous [slashdot.org] now would they?
Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Tetris 2 and The New Tetris. They both still have massive replay value and really spurred me to look into polyomino [amazon.com] based puzzles [amazon.com] which had increased fame in the mid 1960s until everyone realized that they had little real world application (but they still show up in papers [acm.org]). Still, it lead me to a book by Martin Gardner [wikipedia.org] who wrote Scientific American columns on Mathematical Games. If you remember those, I recommend this book [amazon.com]. So something good came out of studying tile theory and Tetris for me but there's no evidence yet it did anything more for me than say playing Gauntlet on the NES would have.
Re:Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Real (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. This Science Experiment brought to you by Nintendo.
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This Science Experiment brought to you by Nintendo.
Super Mario Rocket Science!
Re:Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Real (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know whether it applies broadly or just to this particular game, but I can state that Tetris had a profound impact on my wife's quality of life. She was born with brain damage from a lack of oxygen due to pregnancy complications. This left her epileptic and with extremely poor muscle control/coordination. She used to get made fun of in school because kids thought she was mentally retarded because she moved slowly and awkwardly (just the opposite, really -- she was the first woman to ever get a scholarship to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology). As a child, however, at the recommendation of her doctor, her parents encouraged her to play Tetris and other hand-eye-coordination / reaction time games a lot, something she continued all the way through college. The parts of her brain that affect motor control are still damaged, but EEGs now show that other parts of her brain have taken up the slack. You'd never know she used to have trouble with motor control.
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While this is an interesting/intriguing anecdote, it (for obvious reasons) doesn't mention how she would have fared without playing tetris.
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As a child, however, at the recommendation of her doctor, her parents encouraged her to play Tetris and other hand-eye-coordination / reaction time games a lot, [..] EEGs now show that other parts of her brain have taken up the slack. You'd never know she used to have trouble with motor control.
If you observe closely, there may be occasional giveaway signals [youtube.com] to the way your wife's brain approaches hand/eye coordination...
Stinking Tetris-Heads, I prefer.... (Score:2)
Pente [wikipedia.org], the manly cortical game.
T-spin triple (Score:5, Interesting)
So you're saying this is akin to jamming the square block in the square hole and the triangle block in the triangle hole?
No, it's shoving the T-shaped block past other blocks into a T-shaped hole. Almost every Tetris game since Tetris Worlds (2001), including Tetris DS, has allowed for this strange move [ytmnd.com].
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So you're saying you had control groups of people that played other video games and Tetris showed a difference? Or a control group studying chess? I suspect the title of this article should be "Puzzles Improve Your Brain."
There was no control group in this experiment. They did a before and after with a group of people.
I don't understand why you think the title should be generalized to Puzzles instead of Tetris. The experiment only looked at the impact of Tetris on the brain and not puzzles in general. It is natural to hypothesize that other types of games will have a similar impact, but until that is tested and confirmed across a spectrum of puzzles, you can't safely generalize that.
No one is claiming that playing Tetris
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There was no control group in this experiment. They did a before and after with a group of people.
Well, if this is true ... and I can't find the paper yet so I don't know. Then you're going to have the hilarious possibility that they were merely observing natural growth of the cortex over time. I hope they understand that with no control group they are setting themselves up for scientific disaster.
I mean, how are they going to eliminate alternative explanations [wikipedia.org]? This is standard scientific procedure--I'd be shocked to hear this being published without adhering to something I learned about in fou
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There have been similar studies with mice. They drop a mouse in a tub of water, the mouse swims around and then it finds the "island" so it doesn't drown. After a couple times of this the mouse immediately goes to the island.
Enter Mr. Surgeon to remove part of the mouse's brain. Now the mouse swims in circles until it drowns (or the researcher rescues it). Put the brain-damaged mouse in the mouse-equivalent of Disneyland - lots of wheels and slides and blocks and other stimulative things for about a m
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...which interesting as it may be, fails to address the issue.
Yes, there can be any number of reasons to hypothesize that Tetris is linked to brain growth. Various similar-but-different experiments using different stimuli and a different species of animal can make it appear that this might well be the case.
And then, to find out, you run a controlled experiment. No control group = no valid conclusion.
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Then you're going to have the hilarious possibility that they were merely observing natural growth of the cortex over time.
And, as has been observed, the test subjects were a group of "adolescent girls", so that is quite likely what happened. But forget about all that. The important thing to remember is that Tetris does cause brain growth. Studies have shown it. All you Tetris-brain-growth-deniers may now be labeled as extremists with an agenda who stupidly ignore the findings of the scientific community. How can you be so so stupid? You need to play more Tetris.
Re:Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Real (Score:4, Informative)
Then you're going to have the hilarious possibility that they were merely observing natural growth of the cortex over time.
I just found the paper online here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1756-0500-2-174.pdf [biomedcentral.com] . The article did not mention a control group (how I hate stupid science reporting), but there was one. This is almost certainly not normally occurring growth that was observed.
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Correct. And, yes, the crowd highly modded the ass-product.
This is where we're at with modern discourse.
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It is natural to hypothesize that other types of games will have a similar impact, but until that is tested and confirmed across a spectrum of puzzles, you can't safely generalize that.
No, I'd hypothesize pretty much the same as what the article stated, that there's something more or less special about Tetris... It's a puzzle, so it has a thinking component, but it's also real time so you're rewarded for solving that puzzle over and over as fast as possible. I know my mind works in two modes: one when I'm solving problems alone, another when I'm in a testing situation (e.g. school, interviews, etc), so there is a difference when you're trying to do things as quickly as possible.
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I would find it very surprising if Tetris could improve the brain, but speed chess, sudoku, crossword puzzles, etc could not. They may make improvements on somewhat different areas of the brain, but I would expect they would all provide some benefits. Tetris rewards speedy hand-eye coordination to move the blocks quickly, but does not engage the verbal parts of the brain like a crossword puzzle does.
I think the old adage "use it or lose it" applies just as well to the brain as to our muscles. There is al
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Playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with, says a new study to be published later this week.
So you're saying you had control groups of people that played other video games and Tetris showed a difference? Or a control group studying chess? I suspect the title of this article should be "Puzzles Improve Your Brain."
You have that backwards. The article is correct. Since they only tested Tetris, the only claim they can make is about Tetris.
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They can't really make any claims about anything unless they have a good control group. It's like saying that my brain is growing better because I like peanut butter. Or perhaps because I enjoy walking. Or because I like to crack my knuckles. There are millions of variables. They could at the very least try to isolate one of them before claiming any causation.
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Those parts didn't include the ones that were supposed to keep my roommate from failing out of college while he was playing Tetris.
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I could imagine that it would also depend on the type of game or puzzle played.
As you say, Tetris is good for tile theory (Funnily enough, I have skills at packing freight or for my holidays that are simply...uncanny), but I don't know that a steady diet of Gauntlet would have been much help there.
Yes, I played a lot of Tetris, why do you ask?
Re:Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Real (Score:4, Informative)
The pretty pictures wouldn't happen to be statistically erroneous [slashdot.org] now would they?
You do realize that not all fMRI research uses the methodology in the paper referred to by the slashdot article you linked to, right? Not even most of it, actually. The article you referred to only discusses the case where the regions of interest for correlations between behavioral and fMRI measures are selected by the size of the correlation itself. Much of that bad stuff happens in the field of social neuroscience. Although I haven't read the paper in question because it evidently won't be out until Thursday, there's no reason to believe based on the blurb that they had any reason to use that (horribly flawed) methodology.
Re:Elektronorgtechnica Bias -- Any Video Game Real (Score:2)
srsly?! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:srsly?! (Score:5, Funny)
Madness? This is SLASHDOT.
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Seriously now, the study has some merit.
Other than getting better at the game, these youngsters were performing difficult repetitive tasks akin to musicians learning to play instruments. The key is in the age of the learning. If a child is young enough, his or her brain increases in size and density. Check out:
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/23/27/9240 [jneurosci.org]
Blockout! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody remember Blockout [wikipedia.org]? That was a lot more challenging with it being in 3D. :) Aww the days of yore..
Re:Blockout! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh man!
I played that for hours and hours a day.
Really improved my skills to fit a LOT of luggage in the car.
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That reminds me of Marble Madness [wikipedia.org], to some degree. I thought that was much more fun than Tetris. It was like Lemmings + Tetris, in 3D with 'physics'.
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Video Games Improves Your Brain (fixed) (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, Tetris is the exception.. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's been quite a bit of previous research done on Tetris, which has found that just about the only thing playing tetris improves is your ability to play tetris. The spatial expertise acquired while playing tetris is highly domain specific (eg. see VK Sims, RE Mayer (2002) [wiley.com]). In fact Tetris has so few measurable changes on behavior that it's often used as the control game for action video game research (eg. Green CS, Bavelier D. (2003) [nature.com]).
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There's been quite a bit of previous research done on Tetris, which has found that just about the only thing playing tetris improves is your ability to play tetris. The spatial expertise acquired while playing tetris is highly domain specific
Bagging groceries is like real-life tetris :-)
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Good to know I'm not the only one.
Oh boy! (Score:2, Insightful)
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I would wager that the decrease in violent crime that have occurred this century are related to the rise of violent life like video games.
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I would wager that the decrease in violent crime that have occurred this century are related to the rise of violent life like video games.
Sounds logical. If I'm sitting on my arse, playing video games, I'm not out looking for trouble. And unfortunately, probably getting more sedentary and less able to commit acts of physical violence as well.
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I would wager that the decrease in violent crime that have occurred this century are related to the rise of violent life like video games.
Related? Well, probably so. *Causatively* related? Probably not.
As society has developed, improvements in technology (which have made video games possible) have increased the standard of living while at the same time requiring greater specialization and division of labor. The levels of education and... well, *concentration* necessary to invent and effectively use such technologies can only occur in an environment where people feel reasonably safe. If any trip down the highway runs the risk of being att
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. . . they don't have violent video games in somolia. . .
Control group: Pirates /. and play Halo
Test Group: Nerds who read
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. . . they don't have violent video games in somolia. . .
Control group: Pirates /. and play Halo
Test Group: Nerds who read
I love it! We'll drop a bunch of Halo-playing /. nerds in Somalia, and bring a bunch of Somalian pirates to random universities across the US, and see what happens to their rates of violence and death!
They do.. (Score:4, Informative)
Playing lots of FPS or "action video games" do have significant, measurable effects on cognition including speeding reaction time, decreasing attentional blink, improving multi-element tracking, improving spatial resolution for both vision and attention, etc etc.. A lot of interesting research on the subject is being done at the Bavelier Lab [rochester.edu]. Review papers can be found here [rochester.edu] and here [rochester.edu] [PDF warning].
The Song (Score:5, Funny)
Da Da-Da-Da Da Da Da, Da Da, Da Da, Da Da Da, Dah-Dah-Dah,
Duh,Duh,Duh, Da-Da-Da, Dah Dah, Dum Doo, Dee Dee, Dah Do De Doo.
Dahhh Dahh, Dahhhh Dahhh, Dahhh Dahhh, Dahhhhhh
Dahhh Dahh, Dooooo Dahhhh, Dum Do Deeee Dahhhhhhh,
Repeat!
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Unfortunately, storing a half million copies of the song negates any practical functional gains beyond loading your trunk very efficiently.
Above sentence (not yours but this is a good place to link) is stupid. Why? Because every time you hear the song it doesn't generate a new recording in your mind. It updates the old one. Sometimes you get a few spare copies, but often some apparently random experience will actually merge the copies, improving both retention and quality of the copy. So like you said, Repeat!
Re:The Song (Score:4, Funny)
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Tetris and Super Mario Brothers music (Score:1)
What if tetris had lyrics (Score:2)
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Da Da-Da-Da Da Da Da, Da Da, Da Da, Da Da Da, Dah-Dah-Dah,
Duh,Duh,Duh, Da-Da-Da, Dah Dah, Dum Doo, Dee Dee, Dah Do De Doo.
Dahhh Dahh, Dahhhh Dahhh, Dahhh Dahhh, Dahhhhhh
Dahhh Dahh, Dooooo Dahhhh, Dum Do Deeee Dahhhhhhh,
You're out of tune (Score:2)
Da Da-Da-Da Da Da Da, Da Da, Da Da, Da Da Da
Your "Nyet" is out of tune, comrade.
It's called Korobeiniki (Score:5, Interesting)
Tetris has music?
Quick, before it gets flagged [youtube.com].
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Damn, I just got rid of my last mod point!
The video brings up good info about why we don't have other Tetris-like games.
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Stop playing it emacs...
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Plus, it gives you an incredible advantage (Score:2, Funny)
...in masonry.
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How does it compare to my level 7 handshake?
I is real clever!!! (Score:3, Informative)
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Tetris is clearly not working, because you think that sentence is witty :P
Playing games (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but I don't want to play a game if it makes my brain more dense. Please, I want to remain smart, that's why I hang out here!
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I think I see the problem.
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This is what it means traditionally, the GP was thinking too hard when he heard the expression.
So what (Score:1)
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You know...this could help explain the obesity levels of American's. It is Pac Man's fault! Quick! Where's my lawyer!
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No, but it improves your skill at following a pair of Bavarian twins through the woods...
The OS kernel that links brain and mind (Score:2, Interesting)
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Tetris Helps... (Score:5, Funny)
Plasticity Makes Perfect (Score:3, Funny)
Basically they did an MRI scan of girls before the study, then scanned them again after they had played Tetris for three months and their brain showed increased density rostral to the central sulcus, which is the region responsible for complex movements of the fingers and hands (based on the rough rendering at the top of TFA).
Where do I go to get funding to do stupid stuff like this? I have an MR machine, I have 3-months to kick back and travel the world giving 10 minute seminars while my research subjects regulate themselves. Please, someone tell me what I must do.
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Well, in order to get instant success like that, there's only one thing to do:
Stop being ethical.
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Where do I go to get funding to do stupid stuff like this?
Grants.gov [grants.gov].
I have an MR machine, I have 3-months to kick back and travel the world giving 10 minute seminars while my research subjects regulate themselves. Please, someone tell me what I must do.
Usually a PHS 398 Research Plan. Careful, it can't be more than 25 pages for Items 2-5.
Cool. (Score:1)
Please Send Article to August 1999 (Score:1)
Makes sense then... (Score:1)
Thanks, Captiain Obvious! (Score:4, Funny)
Next:
"Exercising Improves Your Body"
News at 11.
Anybody else here played the MS Tetris much? (Score:2, Interesting)
There was a version of Tetris included with the Best of Windows Entertainment Pack (BOWEP). I've spent so many hours on that game it's not even funny... it went up to level 10 (the levels advanced according to how many lines you cleared... level 10 began after 93 lines), although you could start at any level (higher levels give more points).
It's kinda strict, though... it doesn't allow T-spins (where a T piece is rotated into a position that would be impossible for it to reach otherwise) or easy spin (which
Of course it increases brain density! (Score:5, Funny)
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The golden rule (and know your sources) (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people are familar with the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you), and most in business are familiar with the other golden rule (He who has the gold makes the rules). I would just be cautious about any study that is funded by a game producer that concludes that games are good for you.
I don't doubt that such a positive correllation is possible. I just am leary of any study that finds in favor of the payor. It's like those periodic news stories you see where it is touted that businesses are moving back toward formal attire, that "the suit is back", or similar sentiments. The most common sources for those news items (if they are even worthy of being called "news") are PR firms associated with menswear retailers like The Men's Warehouse. All the statistics in the press releases seem well researched and are accepted as valid, but the conclusions are being made while the menswear retailer(s) hold(s) the purse strings.
The only reassuring thing about this particular study is the research entity, the Mind Research Network. They appear to be a legitimate non-profit corporation whose mission centers around understanding mental illness and cognitive processes. I couldn't find any serious criticisms of their other work. It will be interesting to see how this study fares as it is reviewed by peers and colleagues.
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Most people are familar with the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you), and most in business are familiar with the other golden rule (He who has the gold makes the rules). I would just be cautious about any study that is funded by a game producer that concludes that games are good for you.
I don't doubt that such a positive correllation is possible. I just am leary of any study that finds in favor of the payor.
One of these days, the deep pockets that fund this type of research will wise up, and start a tit-for-tat scheme... The Dairy Council will fund a $500,000 project that shows playing video games makes you a genius, and Nintendo will fund a $500,000 study that finds milk makes you superhuman.
Turbo Button Hack (Score:4, Interesting)
How I miss the turbo button...
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How I miss the turbo button...
You can have it back with DOSBox, along with Tetris 3.12 [oversigma.com].
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I used to play the original tetris on a 386.
Really? I didn't know there were arcade emulators for the 386. Myself, I used to play the original Tetris in the campus game room.
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I used to play the original tetris on a 386.
Really? I didn't know there were arcade emulators for the 386. Myself, I used to play the original Tetris in the campus game room.
Huh? It seems that the DOS version is the original [oversigma.com], if you don't count the Elektronika 60 prototype.
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Ok... but the original commercial US release. How's that?
In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Funny)
That's why I read \. (Score:1)
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The same must be true for boys because you even managed to misspell /.
Yet another load of.... (Score:2)
WTF? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, storing a half million copies of the song negates any practical functional gains beyond loading your trunk very efficiently.
What is this? Some kind of joke? Or... something?
Is it like, burning a half-million copies of the Tetris song to CD fills up your car trunk?
WTF is going on with this sentence? I can't make heads or tails of it.
Dunno if it improves mine (Score:2)
And don't even get me started on the psychological issues that surface when I see bathroom floor tiles after a round of Tetris.
boot times (Score:2)
I wonder if this has anything to do with the extensive boot times every morning.
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Who knows, if you'd pointed out that Tetris was actually created in Russia you might have been moderated informative instead of offtopic...
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Hmm, it's likely that the effect would be less noticeable if they were heavy video gamers prior to this study. Non-gamers were probably targeted to avoid this, and girls were an obvious choice.
It also raises a few more interesting questions... boys and girls tend to excel in different areas (math vs. language, for instance). Could these different strengths and weaknesses be a result of video game use, or could they be in part a cause of boys' higher inclination to play video games? Of course, it could also
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It also raises a few more interesting questions... boys and girls tend to excel in different areas (math vs. language, for instance). Could these different strengths and weaknesses be a result of video game use, or could they be in part a cause of boys' higher inclination to play video games? Of course, it could also be completely unrelated (cue "correlation is not causation").
Obviously another study is required. Where do I sign up?!
Since the differences have been documented well before the advent of video games, they're definitely not causative.
However, there is a theory that the differences are NOT innate, but rather, a result of socialization that begins as soon as gender is known. We speak to boys and girls differently, even if they're newborns. We talk about them differently, play with them differently, and even perceive them differently. Now that most children's genders are known months before they are born, that gender social