Brains getting used to violence
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Teens who watch more violence on TV or in video games might grow more numb to violence. Researchers saw it in a study of 22 teenage boys who watched four-second video clips with low, mild or moderate - but not extreme - violence.
Brain scans showed that the more mild or moderate violence they watched, the less sensitive their brains were to the violence.
At the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, researcher Jordan Grafman says you can't keep teens entirely free of violence. So he says:
``The important issue here is limiting the frequency and the intensity of their exposure to aggression.'' (6 seconds)
The study was in the Oxford Journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.