There is no denying the impact Pokemon has had on the world. Time and again, the franchise has taken fans by storm with everything from its video games to its anime. For decades now, the IP has commanded the attention of fans young and old. And according to researchers at Stanford University, it seems old-school fans may have dedicated a specific part of the brain for recalling Pokemon names.
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And yes, we’re totally serious. A slew of very smart people figured out this connection, and a report in the scientific journal Nature.
The report documents an experiment researchers at Stanford did involving Pokemon. The team compared the brains of people who played “a lot of Pokemon in their childhood” to those who did not. Specifically, the group reviewed people who played Pokemon between 1995 and 1998 when the game was beginning its life. So of course, you can imagine how the team reacted when results revealed that a specific part of the brain reacted to Pokemon.
According to the new report, the experiment involved showing patients images of Pokemon from the original generation. For fans who played the games a lot, a specific part of their brain lit up consistently with the stimuli. So if you are part of that demographic, well – your brain might light up when you see Pikachu as well.
As for why the brain does this, researchers are not completely sure. However, the report does say the brain’s response could be due to the age players were when they picked up Pokemon.”If you look at Pokemon, they’re very small and you use your central vision, so they land in a part of the center of your retina,” researcher Jesse Gomez explained.
“Because they have different locations on your retina,” he continued, “they have different locations in your brain, and it turns out that the Pokemon region emerges in a part of your brain that responds to information from the center of your retina… [The] finding suggests that the very way that you look at a visual stimulus, like a Pokemon or words, determines why your brain is organized the way it is. That’s useful going forward because it might suggest that visual deficits like Dyslexia or face-blindness might result simply from the way you look at stimuli, and so it’s a promising future avenue.”
Obviously, researchers will be able to take this information and find new ways to map the brain. Despite all of our advanced technology and medicine, the brain has plenty of secrets which elude us to this day. But thanks to this report, we’ve learned Pokemon might help pros navigate all that grey matter more easily.
What do you think about this latest Pokemon report? Let us know what you think in the comments below as well as on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!
