还记不记得你妈妈经常朝你大喊大叫，说总玩电子游戏会变傻?现在有科学家发现妈妈们错了。一项新的研究显示，连续两个月每天玩半个小时“超级玛丽64”能让大脑容积“显著”增大。

研究中提到的因果关系非常惊人。领导此次研究的Simon Kühn说，“虽然以前的研究显示玩电子游戏会造成大脑结构不同的改变，目前的这项研究显示了电子游戏和大脑体积增大之间的直接因果关系。”

“这证明大脑的特定区域可能通过电子游戏来进行训练。”这对于治疗士兵的“创伤后精神紧张性精神障碍”(PTSD)或类似疾病是非常有效的。

这条新闻确实看起来不错，但是也别高兴地太早。这项研究的样本很小，只有23名成年人，所以不是每个人都会得到相同的结果。另外，玩太多的电子游戏确实会导致大脑某一部分的萎缩。所以，你妈妈的话也不完全都是错的。

Playing Super Mario 64 Makes Your Brain Bigger

You know how your mom used to yell that playing video games would turn your brain into mush? Turns out she was exactly wrong. A new study

shows that playing Super Mario 64 for half an hour a day over the course of two months causes a "significant" increase in brain size。

What makes this study compelling is that causation bit. "While previous studies have shown differences in brain structure of video

gamers, the present study can demonstrate the direct causal link between video gaming and a volumetric brain increase," says study leader Simon Kühn. "This proves that specific brain regions can be trained by means of video games." And that's a really good thing when it comes to stuff like helping soldiers recover from PTSD。

This is neat news, but don't go crazy with it. The study was relatively small—just 23 adults—so not everybody will get the same results. Plus, playing too many video games can actually make certain parts of your brain shrink. So actually, your mom was half right。