Disparity in brain dynamics for video games played on small and large displays

Abstract

In this research, we investigated the differences in brain activity while the subjects played video game. Experiment was conducted with two screen sizes; a large screen (40-inch display) and a small screen (3.5-inch handheld game). A total of 28 subjects participated in the study where two groups of 14 subjects played video games on two different screen sizes. Prior to video game play, baseline electroencephalogram (EEG) data were recorded during eyes open (EO) resting condition for five minutes. While the subjects played video game, the data were collected using a 19-channel EEG machine. The analysis was made by comparing the EEG results of subjects playing video game with that of baseline data. In order to remove artefacts like eye blinking and eye movements, a pre-processing like filtering was performed to clean the data. The analysis was made by using three measures, i.e., absolute power, coherence and phase lag. The analysis was made on four main frequency bands. It was found that the brain was active in beta band as higher absolute power was observed in occipital, parietal frontal and motor regions while playing video game as compared to baseline condition. Also, the coherence results showed that these regions are well connected. Furthermore, faster communication was observed from phase lag result for these regions.