Why does it often seem that men enjoy playing video games more than women? Perhaps because they do.

A new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.

This may explain why men are more likely to report feeling addicted to video games than women are, the researchers say in an online article in The Journal of Psychiatric Research. The lead author is Fumiko Hoeft of the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Image Credit... Stuart Goldenberg

For the study, the researchers took a group of 22 young volunteers  half men, half women  and had them play a game as an M.R.I. machine looked at what was happening in their brains. The study found that in the men, there was much more activity in the mesocorticolimbic system.