By YU FUJINAMI/ Staff Writer
September 24, 2024 at 08:00 JST
The Evo Japan 2019 international e-sports event was held in Fukuoka. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
A team of scientists developed a highly precise method of predicting winners of video game competitions through brainwave analyses.
The system, using artificial intelligence, has an accuracy rate of 80 percent and can correctly pick huge upsets.
“The ideal brain state for competitions has been determined,” said chief researcher Sorato Minami. “This discovery may prove useful in mental training and conditioning. Comparing individuals’ cerebral barometers with those of professional gamers can provide feedback for optimizing brain performance.”
The researchers from NTT Communication Science Laboratories measured brainwave patterns, or neural oscillations, among e-sports players via electroencephalography before their matches.
The team focused on fighting games because the players do not need full-body movements, making it easier to monitor their neural oscillations.
Twenty players agreed to have their brainwave patterns studied, both shortly before matches and during bouts. The study covered 3,200 single-round competitions.
Data on the brainwaves were entered into an AI system. It correctly predicted the winners in four-fifths of the competitions, including surprise victories and evenly matched bouts, by going beyond simple scrutiny of the players’ competition records.
According to the researchers, gamers with a significantly increased level of the beta wave immediately before matches tended to emerge victorious because this neural oscillation rhythm enables them to maintain concentration.
The scientists also pinpointed brainwave rhythms that helped players win best-of-three contests, based on neural oscillations of an additional 20 gamers.
The gamma-band cerebral wave associated with strategic decisions improves competitors’ chances of victory in the first round, while the emotion-controlling alpha wave plays an important role during the third round, the researchers said.
According to Minami, this discovery is consistent with the results of a survey on e-sports contestants, who emphasized the importance of developing tactics in the early stage and keeping calm in the latter phase.
The ideal brain state ascertained in the study could prove beneficial to tennis players and martial arts fighters, given that these sports also have a one-on-one format.
Outside the sports domain, the scientists believe their method can be used to help people in everyday pressure-packed situations, such as medical surgeries, classroom teaching and business presentations.
The team’s findings were published in the scientific journal Computers in Human Behavior at (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108351).
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