FMRI of gameplay

Abstract

Video games have become an integral part of our lives. Studying the brain’s responses to video games becomes more and more important for many aspects of video games. This thesis describes our effort in using neuroimaging techniques and computational approaches to study the brain’s responses to gameplay-based stimuli. We have designed a car driving video game and carried out the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human subject during the experiment. We present fiber centered Granger causality analysis (GCA) studies on fMRI datasets in order to elucidate the functional dynamics of GCA. Precisely, we first acquired the corpus callosum fibers,which are used as a structural communication channel between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Then, we extract the fMRI BOLD signals from the two ends of a white matter fiber derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data, and examine their Granger causalities based on fMRI data. Our experimental results show reasonably good correspondence between the car driving directions and the Granger causalities in the fMRI data. Our studies revealed meaningful functional brain dynamics driven by the gameplay.