Video games have evolved from a casual entertainment outlet to a multibillion-dollar pop cultural behemoth, spawning merch and movies. Playing games can boost short-term memory, research revealed.
Through the years, video games have assisted medical experts worldwide in creating physiological rehabilitation programs for individuals in need (using motion-based gaming accessories like the Nintendo Wii).
Video Games Can Help Adults Boost Memory
The research discovered that a rhythm-based game meant to teach drumming could boost short-term memory.
Science Alert said researchers divided 47 individuals aged 60 to 79 into two groups to assess the game's impact.
One group played Rhythmicity for 20 minutes five days a week for eight weeks while the other played a word search.
Rhythmicity's strategies for focusing visual perception and selective attention could influence short-term memory with a face recognition exercise.
"[Only] the rhythm training group exhibited improved short-term memory on a face recognition task, thereby providing important evidence that musical rhythm training can benefit performance on a nonmusical task," researchers wrote in their study uploaded in PNAS.
Rhythmicity trained participants to play a beat on a tablet using visual clues. As players progressed, pace, intricacy, and accuracy increased.
The game's ability to change difficulty dependent on the user pushes them to improve without spoiling their gaming pleasure.
Post-training included examination of facial recognition using EEG. After eight weeks, rhythmicity players were better at identifying faces, and EEG testing showed increased activity in the superior parietal lobule, which is connected with sight-reading music and short-term visual recall.
The study's authors have been working in this field since 2013 when they invented the video game NeuroRacer. After four weeks of playing, older people's working memory and sustained attention have improved dramatically.
According to ABP Live, this study shows that using video games properly might help people keep their mental sharpness, especially as they age.
Other Memory-Boosting Games
After that, study participants played Body-Brain Trainer to raise seniors' blood pressure, balance, and attentiveness.
According to ScienceAlert, the game used the player's heart rate to adjust to his fitness level.
The virtual reality Labyrinth, which requires spatial navigation, can help older persons' long-term memory after four weeks of training.
These games illustrate strategies to keep our thoughts sharp as we age.
"These games all have the same underlying adaptive algorithms and approach, but they are using very, very different types of activity; and in all of them we show that you can improve cognitive abilities in this population," said neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley from UCSF in a statement (via ScienceDaily).
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