If you find video games a struggle, it could be to do with the size of certain parts of your brain, a study suggests.

一项研究显示，如果你发现玩电子游戏是一种痛苦，那么可能跟你大脑某些部位的大小有关。

These are the parts which are in play

US researchers found they could predict how well an amateur业余的 player might perform on a game by measuring the volume of key sections of the brain.

Writing in the journal Cerebral¹ Cortex, they suggest their findings could have wider implications for understanding the differences in learning rates.

There is broad acceptance of a link between brain size and intelligence.

However it remains² a complicated picture. Within the animal kingdom some smaller brains appear superior to many larger ones: the monkey's compared with the horse, for instance例如, or the human and the elephant.

But there are certain parts of the brain which can be disproportionately不成比例地 larger, and this may explain some differences in cognitive³ ability认知能力 - between individuals as well as species.

A multi-disciplinary team from the University of Illinois, the University of Pittsburgh and Massachusetts Institute of Technology recruited招募，雇佣 39 adults - 10 men, 29 women - who had spent less than three hours each week playing video games in the previous two years.

They then had to play one of two versions of a specially⁴ developed game. One required them to focus exclusively专有地，排外地 on achieving a single goal, the other involved shifting priorities.

Playing power

MRI核磁共振成像 scans showed participants with a larger nucleus⁵ accumbens, which is part of the brain's reward centre, outperformed others in the first few hours, perhaps due to the "sense of achievement and the emotional reward" accompanying achievement in the earliest stages of learning, the team speculated.

But those players who ultimately performed best on the game in which priorities changed had larger sections deep in the centre of the brain, known as the caudate有尾的 and putamen核.

"This makes sense, because these areas have been linked to learning procedures and new skills, as well as adapting to changing environments. These people could do a number of things at once. Think of it like driving a car, as well as looking at the road, you're tampering⁶ with损害，干预 your GPS, and talking to your passengers," says Prof Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois.

"The great thing about using a video game rather than methodical cognitive tests is that it brings us a step closer to the real world and the challenges people face."

In total, the team calculated that nearly a quarter of the difference in performance could be predicted by measuring the volume of the brain.