NEWS YOU CAN USE: There’s a Pea-Sized Brain Region for Pokemon Characters If You Played A Lot as a Kid.

“Because Pokémon are very small and viewed with our central vision most of the time, they occupy a small portion in the central retina when we’re looking at them,” said Gomez. “Faces are a bit bigger, so they occupy a slightly larger portion of the central retina. Scenes, as we navigate through them, are very large and extend all the way into our peripheral vision.” So the information from each type of stimulus ends up being sent to slightly different locations in the brain.

“These findings suggest that our brain is capable of developing more specialized brain regions for recognizing objects than we previously thought,” said Gomez. “So we’re likely not limited by our brain, but instead by how much we can experience in childhood.”

For the benefit of parents who might be concerned that playing such games is “rewiring” children’s brains, Gomez emphasizes that any substantial experience we have will affect the brain; it’s designed to be adaptive to accommodate new experiences, especially when we’re young. In fact, “Most of the Pokémon experts I scanned are getting their PhDs in science or working at companies like Google, so there’s no evidence to suggest being a Pokémon expert had any adverse impact,” he said. “They’re all doing very well.”

Well, that’s good to know.