Agrima's Post

Board Game Professionals....Found to be using a Special Part of the Brain
By: Agrima

Just recently, on January 21st, 2011, scientists have found that when professional board game players are forced to make a quick move or are in a crunched amount of time, there is a special trained part of the brain they used to win or make the move they do. This was first discovered by scientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, when they were examining the brains of a group of professional Japanese shogi players (Shogi is a game much like our chess, with 20 characters, which is very popular in Japan). While doing this, they also made the players do things for them in between. For example, when they just started to notice this part of the players’ brain, they made the player make a move in 2-4 seconds. They also tested 8-10 seconds. They discovered that when given a longer amount of time, the players did not use this part of the brain. The players only used the part of the brain where all the memorization of 10 years of training had been. When they had found out that professionals had trained their minds to have this part of their brains without even knowing it, they wondered if it was the same for amateurs. So, they tested it out. They found out that it wasn’t the same. The amateurs didn’t train 3-4 hours a day for 10 years, so that part of the brain that was in the professionals’ minds hadn’t yet developed in theirs. The scientists are really surprised with their findings. “The professional players started to use the parts of the brains that are well developed in mice and rats and not so well developed in primates, so the findings were a surprise - by becoming expert, shogi masters start to use all parts of the brain.” quoted a lead researcher in “Science” magazine. Would you train as much as a typical professional board game player for this part of the brain? Why or why not?