Persaud tirbanie ted_slideshow

Your brain on video games

Daphne Bavelier

Daphne is a Brain Scientist who studies the affects of video games on your brain and abilities. They can make you smarter,

better, and faster. Cool, huh?

I found this TED talk particularly interesting because I watched a talk about how gamers who play games that require

teamwork and leadership will carry that behavior in the workplace for sometime afterwards. This means the player would have a raised willingness to adapt and overcome a

problem. That’s what I call being productive!

Daphne surprises the audience about video games today having a greater involvement in the lives of older

individuals.

The presentation kept the audience engaged by constantly drawing connections back to everyday life

and the simple tasks we experience that can be affected by something such as playing an action video game for

30 minutes a day.

Dynamism

Daphne deserves a 4 out of 5. Keeping the audience engaged was her primary goal with this statistic-heavy research. She designed her presentation in a way that used less stats and

relied more on the stunning results to captivate and connect to the audience and keep them listening. She spoke well with

inflection and clarity. Daphne could have interacted with her stage space a bit more, she stood very still and virtually in one

spot.

4 / 5

We all want to be involved

Daphne decided to make lab rats of the audience! Although, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. She displayed some tests on the

screen for the audience to engage in.

If Daphne were at her testing facility, she would hook up several electrodes to the head of the test subject. These

electrodes translate information to a computer so they can see which parts of the brain become more active during the tests.

Daphne does a great job keeping her slides concise and simple which is a tip by Garr Reynolds. It takes a lot of practice speaking in front of an audience comfortably.

Daphne’s words were clear, audible, and her word choice fit the audience she was speaking to; she really did her

research!

Based on Daphne’s delivery I have learned that making a point doesn’t need a lot of big words or a lot of numbers, but it needs

to be relevant in our lives to be truly taken in. I can listen to statistics all I want but what use is it to me? On another note, TED speakers probably go through their speeches dozens of times. They all speak confidently, and know what it is to say and when to move on. Small timing cues are practiced and

placed in the speech which are extremely important concerning the flow of the overall presentation.

In comparison to Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, I found a particular piece of information that connected the two talks. Sir Ken Robinson talks about ‘Divergent Thinking’ and about how

divergent thinking is important for creativity. The reason why I note this is because many games REQUIRE you to divergently

think. They require you to think outside the box sometimes and there is also many ways to pass a level in a lot of games out

there! So playing video games may help increase your ability to divergently think! Now that’s pretty interesting! Does this mean

video games can make us more creative?

Sir Ken uses a lot of humor to keep the audience lively while Daphne uses a bit less humor. Primarily, she wants to

connect directly with her audience based on impactful information without all the unnecessary information, and by

doing so she keeps just the juicy stuff for the audience to take in. They both propose solutions to their ideals, taking theoretical research and applying it in practical ways so that people can better understand how their ideals will

have an affect.

A good tip would be to find the things that you and your audience both share. This will allow the audience to be moved by their innate

feelings rather than processing the information and deciding how they ‘rationally’ feel afterwards, which often times gets clouded with false skepticism and hesitation. The audience has a split-

second to decide how they feel about it and it’s at that moment where it’s important to make the connection. They will

automatically take in things that are mutually believed and felt; not by you barking up their tree demanding approval.