Pokémon TAKE OVER specific brain cells – and experts have a whole region dedicated to identifying them
ARDENT Pokémon fans have a special area of their brain devoted to identifying the creatures, scientists have found.
MRI scans performed by boffins in the US show that if you played the game as a child, you may now have a specific area of your brain that is used to remember things relating to Pikachu, Bulbasaur and Psyduck.
Researchers scanned the brains of Pokémon experts who played the game on Game Boy during the 1990s, as well as others who weren't familiar with the franchise.
The test subjects were shown pictures of Pokémon along with unrelated images, and the reactions of their brains were measured.
According to the paper published in the prestigious journal Nature: Human Behaviour, the responses of Pokémon experts to images of creatures they were asked to identify were different to when when identifying anything else.
They had thought that recalling information about Pokémon might trigger the same areas of the brain as for faces, bodies and animals -- but actually found a totally new region instead.
Jesse Gomez, one of the studies' authors and the driving force behind it, the location of the brain's Pokémon centre is "consistent between people", and found in the brain's high-level visual cortex, which normally helps us recognise things like words, places and other people.
"Childhood experience with Pokémon results in a spatially consistent topography for Pokémon," the paper says.
All of the experts scanned had played the game between the ages of five and eight, on the Nintendo Game Boy.
Because the Game Boy's Pokémon were very small, when focusing on them they only fill up a very small section of your vision at the very centre of your retina, meaning the brain processes them differently to other more common things.
Faces generally fill a larger portion of our vision when trying to recognise them -- and wider scenes will activate our peripheral vision too.
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When show images of places from the same game the area didn't activate -- instead, activity was seen in the area of the brain you'd expect to see being used when processing information about places and maps, further indicating that the area is just for identifying the Pokémon themselves.
The research could have implications in how we understand and potentially treat some learning difficulties, according to Gomez.
Knowing that looking at things differently with different parts of the eye can have such marked effects is a "promising future avenue" for research into issues such as dyslexia and face blindness, he says.
The next Pokémon games are due out later this year on Nintendo Switch, while Detective Pikachu will be in cinemas this Friday.
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