This story hasn't made much of the general news, yet.

I say "yet" because it's only a matter of time until it gets turned into a set of brass knuckes with which the gaming industry will be pummelled by the anti-gaming lobby.

Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis recently undertook a study wherein they hooked up 44 adolescents ranging in age from 13 to 17 to a magnetic brain imaging system. They were then put in separate groups: Some played the teen-rated shooter Medal of Honor: Frontline and others played driving game Need for Speed: Underground.

What did they find? How will it become the new ammo for the anti-gaming lobby?

I'll tell ya after the jump...

What they found was that a portion of the brain associated with emotional arousal, the amygdala, was more stimulated and the portion of the brain associated with concentration and focus was suppressed in kids who played the shooter as compared to those who played Need for Speed.

No one can argue with that, I think. It's pretty easy to surmise that you'll get more of an emotional fight-or-flight response when someone is shooting at you, even virtually.

Of course, the researchers did the responsible thing: They stated the facts and did not draw any conclusions, because that wasn't within the scope of the research. No one went on to say, "... and these kids who played the violent game all grew up to be axe murderers or went on to kill their schoolmates."

That would be stupid, because every researcher knows that there's a big difference between corrolation and causailty. Just because it's there doesn't mean that it's a cause. In this case, they didn't even go so far as to mention a corrolation to violence. The just said, "This is your kid's brain on a first-person shooter," and ended the sentence right there.

But let me predict right now that you will see non-technical, non-medically trained non-researchers using these results not only use this as proof of corrolation but also causality.

This will be the argument: Games cause the emotional centers of the brain to fire off and self-control to shut down, so kids who play these games will have a higher likelihood of becoming violent, because violence is pretty much the combination of high emotion and low self-control.

By that reasoning, the fact that jogging causes your heart rate to rise must mean that jogging causes heart attacks because jogging raises the heart rate, and high heart rates are an early indicator of heart attacks.

You see, you can't make any conclusions about the eventual results of physical phenomina unless you can do controlled studies -- with control groups -- to find if there is a connection between brain stimulation and violence and then do further research to see if video games actually cause violence.

And, as of yet, every broad and unbiased study has shown that these centers being periodically turned off or on makes not one bit of difference in a socially and developmentally healthy child.

But that's the kind of logic that will be noticably absent in the next few weeks. You see, it's not about logic with the anti-gaming lobby. It's about emotion, and those with an axe to grind will grasp this study with white-knuckled fists, thrust it toward the heavens and declare, "Yes! Yes! You see, video games are bad for kids! We now have the proof!"

Except that they don't.

Just wanted to give you a heads up on what will be coming out of Hack Honkin's mouth in the next few weeks.

[From Reuters]