How Speedrunners' Brains Work Explained By Scientists

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While most speedrunners will chalk up their skills to good luck and practice, neurologists agree that their brains are specialized just for the task. The way speedrunners manipulate their games of choice may seem incomprehensible at first glance. Furthermore, the ways in which speedrunners interact with the games they play can also startle onlookers; for instance, one speedrunner recently beat the Super Mario world record while blindfolded.

Speedrunning has a long history, nearly as long as the history of gaming itself. The act of timely game completion was ongoing even before there was a group name to define it. But it wasn't until recently that speedrunners could expect regular support, attention, and the guarantee of a living by doing what they do best. Twitch is partly to thank—where runners can broadcast their runs for a live audience and potential income—and events like Games Done Quick can help them achieve notoriety. The fact that speedrunning is growing into a viable career path means that people can spend more time on it. The industry is becoming more diverse as well; for instance, this year will see the hosting of Flame Fatales, an all women-speedrunning competition.

A scientific study of the speedrunner's mind comes from a recent article on Maclean's, which compiled information on the subjects of speedrunning and neurobiology. A group director at the University of Waterloo named Lennart Nacke is quoted there, commenting on speedrunner Mitch Fowler's skill at running Super Mario Bros. 3: "The cognitive system is automated. It’s become so ingrained in his motor cortex that now he’s doing that motor function to achieve the optimal time." The understanding is that the repetition that runners put into games allows them to make inputs almost before they've been prompted. In essence, speedrunners can press buttons before they can even relate the presses' necessity in their runs.

More info comes from Craig Stark at the University of California, Irvine. As Maclean's reads, "… The hippocampus controls declarative memory—the recall of facts and events—but players like Fowler also nurture non-declarative memory: skills, habits and conditioning." This all lends credit to the prowess of speedrunners, and the myriad types of speedrun that can be performed. It's not only that their intense gaming regiments to achieve peak times build up their skills, but it also re-allocates their brain's functions, playing on aspects of cognition that set runners apart from the rest. It's a commendable commitment to neurological development.

One of the major criticisms of speedrunning is its enormous time commitment. In conjunction with the lack of guarantee that a runner will ever be able to submit a competitive record, it can make speedrunning seem not particularly worthwhile, especially so before Twitch and GDQ made space for runners to market their gameplay. It can also be lonely, considering that the majority of speedrunning scenes are for single-player games. Grinding a game can feel fruitless. But anyone who runs games should take the aforementioned findings to heart; it's not just casual gaming, it's athletic practice, and every bit of that practice helps to train the brain.

All this is to say that speedrunning could use more recognition than just that of a common hobby. It is an intensive hobby, with considerable psychological ramifications. If nothing else, speedrunning takes a great degree of skill and practice, and should be recognized as such.

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