A Stanford research paper has been published online in the journal Nature Human Behavior and it indicates that adults who played Pokémon videogames extensively as children have a brain region that responds preferentially to images of Pikachu and other characters from the series.

Many of us that play Pokémon have spent hours capturing, training and battling Pokémon and there may be a wrinkle in your brain that is fond of images of Wobbuffet, Bulbasaur and Pikachu. Stanford psychologists have identified preferential activation to Pokémon characters in the brains of people who played Pokémon videogames extensively as kids.



The Stanford researchers realized they could test a visual theory called eccentricity bias, which states that the size and location of a dedicated category region in the brain depends on two things: how much of our visual field the objects take up, and also which parts of our vision – central or peripheral – we use to view them.

Playing Pokémon on a tiny screen means that the Pokémon characters only take up a very small part of the player’s center of view. The eccentricity bias theory thus predicts that preferential brain activations for Pokémon should be found in the part of the visual cortex that processes objects in our central, or foveal, vision.

Source: https://news.stanford.edu/2019/05/06/regular-pokemon-players-pikachu-brain/

YouTube Clip - Stanford researchers identify brain region activated by Pokémon

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEIuQRHElcQ