Forget cards and gentle aerobics - the best way to keep the elderly sharp is to teach them to play video games, new research suggests.
Psychology research at Hamilton’s McMaster University shows gamers who spend more than four hours a week playing action video games such as Medal of Honour and Half Life 2 have a surprising array of skills ranging from quick reaction times and good spatial reasoning to a strong awareness of their surroundings and better short-term memory.
With as little as 10 hours of training, non-gamers start to show the same mental strengths, says psychology researcher Jim Karle, a graduate student in the department of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour.
Calling video games “beneficial for the brain,” Karle suggested they could be used to help reduce cognitive decline in the elderly.
“Individuals who play action video games on a regular basis - more then four hours a week -appear to be very good at an astonishing variety of skills,” said Karle.
“Just as an elderly adult may do 15 minutes of weight training to fight osteoporosis,” he said, “so could he or she play video games to keep the mind sharp.”
News source: The Toronto Star
Psychology research at Hamilton’s McMaster University shows gamers who spend more than four hours a week playing action video games such as Medal of Honour and Half Life 2 have a surprising array of skills ranging from quick reaction times and good spatial reasoning to a strong awareness of their surroundings and better short-term memory.
With as little as 10 hours of training, non-gamers start to show the same mental strengths, says psychology researcher Jim Karle, a graduate student in the department of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour.
Calling video games “beneficial for the brain,” Karle suggested they could be used to help reduce cognitive decline in the elderly.
“Individuals who play action video games on a regular basis - more then four hours a week -appear to be very good at an astonishing variety of skills,” said Karle.
“Just as an elderly adult may do 15 minutes of weight training to fight osteoporosis,” he said, “so could he or she play video games to keep the mind sharp.”
News source: The Toronto Star
yepp, tho it sounds like "whahahahaw" at first i actually really can nderline the statement...
reaction time increases for sure, and short-term-memory since need to store quite a lot of information parallely while gaming, and as we all know: practice is the best teacher, so why shouldnt it give advantages if u play games that require you to use a lot of daily brain functions?
very logic, yes, thanks for sharing this news.
quite a nice argument for a future argument with my mom about playing for too long rofl, tho she wont believe it again, just like that thingy about not tidying up the bed being effective against mites... oh well...
my mom is so unscientificly thinking lol...
-fm
I'm not sure that "banking" those hours when your are a teenager will necessarily be effective when you are older.
It is interesting how different research by different groups comes to the opposite conclusions. Hopefully the mainstream press will pick this one up!
Cal
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