Research: Violent video games may alter brain function

[J T]

I would have to agree with this. I feel loss of control over emotion playing ANY video game - not just violent ones. Being forced to compete with a computer - or even other person - who reacts faster than you/can play better than you, just gets your blood pumping so to speak.

I know because I get twice as angry playing Tetris Battle on facebook than I do playing Resident Evil or whatever.

While there is still an effect of violent videogames on aggression, it is far less dramatic than the effect of competitiveness, and many of the existing studies confound video game violence with competition, thus making it hard to know if it is the violence or the competition that is leading to increased aggression.

[Hatta]

It reads to me like it's not so much making people violent, as it is reducing emotional self-control, which in turn might result in outbursts that would otherwise be contained.

This is still WAY overreaching what they demonstrated in this paper. They did not demonstrate any functional effect whatsoever. There's no reason to believe from these results that it reduces emotional self control, it's just as likely that it increases emotional self control. All it shows is an increase in activity in a place associated with emotions. We don't know whether that increased activity is in excitatory or inhibitory structures, or both. We also don't know what magnitude this effect has compared to non-violent video games, violent TV and film, participation in sports, sex, or any other activity we enjoy.

Keep in mind that FMRI is the same technology that showed a dead salmon can recognize emotion in human faces.