M.S.: Poor organization, poor planning in La la land. It can also be associated with excessive verbosity. Just not with it. And one of my issues in terms of the gaming industry is they talk a lot about how gamers, gaming augments alpha. Fine, where in the brain? The other is we really have to look at who they're looking at, so an example that I really like to use is that of alcohol. The way the brain reacts to alcohol depends on your relationship with alcohol and the same thing is true with gaming. The way your brain reacts and the way alpha reacts to gaming depend on your relationship. So going back to alcohol a sommelier is somebody who cognitively has to analyze wine. When they take a sip of wine or a glass of wine, cognitive and emotional centers light up. They need the cognitive, it's their work. If you take a social drinker so someone like myself for example who enjoys a lovely glass of wine over dinner, the emotional centers light up. If you take an individual who has a problem with alcohol a.k.a. an alcoholic, the addictive centers light up so it's all based on our relationship with the substance and the same is true with gaming. It's all based on our relationship with the process so of course if you look at studies that are only done on gamers for the industry, of course the cognitive centers light up. But if you look at an adolescent or young male who is an excessive gamer a.k.a. an addict, guess what centers are going to light up? The addictive centers; so again you really have to look at who's being studied and why in the research that's being published. Please read the fine print. The big answer is it depends and I'm going to use the same example as alcohol. Please enjoy, please have a glass of wine unless you're an alcoholic and, same thing, please enjoy a game but don't think it's going to make you incredibly smarter. Don't think it's going to do all this wonderful things but it's fun. I know I am babbling, Rob, but I want to get one more thing in here. There is a social issue here and there's a catch 22 meaning the primary source of emotional bonding or social bonding for young males now is gaming. There's a bit of a catch here so I push parents to please foster other activities for your young boys to bond with other young boys. Of course have them game together.
Rob: Wait let me just take a step back with this. When you talk about gaming, you're talking about massive multiplayer online gaming right?
M.S.: Yes and no. I'm also talking about all of it like two 9-year-old boys sitting side-by-side on a console. So I can get the multiplayer that's a totally different issue. My issue with those games is that you can't just play for half an hour a day. You're part of a league or part of a group, your team can lose if you don't show up to play. There are duties that come with play. It's not a game anymore. People are depending on you. The other, again, there are studies that show for every hour that your online, it reduces your social contact by I think it was at least half an hour. We also have we find the illusion of friendship and camaraderie but they don't exist anywhere else in that individual's life so it's highly married with depression. So people who play a lot of online games are actually depressed. It's also married with anxiety because when they're not on the games, they don't know what to do with themselves so that's the addiction component, that's that anxiety when they're not on the games. Again, I could go on and on about this but please if you play games, just do them because they're fun and any game where you're penalized for not participating is trouble.
Rob: Ok now, another area that you get into in the book is that there are different aspects of people who make them more at risk for addiction to iTech.
M.S.: Yes.
Rob: Talk about that.
M.S.: What I found in my studies is there's essentially a cluster pattern and its associated with anxiety, emotional deregulation, a form of high frontal alpha and another form of ADD which is an old theta SMR. There are clusters, I don't want to say mental illness that's a bit too big but there are clusters of deregulation. Now what we know is.
Rob: Wait there are clusters and you said anxiety, emotional deregulation, high frontal alpha, a form of ADD associated with SMR which nobody knows what you mean.
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