Can a video game rejuvenate an elderly brain?

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Although there are a lot of video games out there that claim to help your brain, most have not been evaluated for this purpose.  A new study at UCSF finds that playing a brain training game for one month can rejuvenate cognitive control for people in their 60s, 70s and 80s.

Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley worked with video game developers to create NeuroRacer, a game which has users perform two task simultaneously (using a joystick to navigate a car and hitting a button whenever the player sees a particular road sign).

After training, their multitasking ability improved beyond the levels of 20-year-olds.  They also got better at remembering information and paying attention.

As people get older, they tend to adopt “more conservative strategies” when it comes to evaluating information and taking action (according to David Meyer, University of Michigan). But they haven’t necessarily lost the ability to act quickly: the video game may help in part because it simply encourages older people to adopt a less conservative strategy.

Read more on NPR

1 thought on “Can a video game rejuvenate an elderly brain?”

  1. An interesting concert. It seems that the longer games are in existence, the more benefits they find for them. it began with children being able to concentrate more and become more socially aware and has progressed to means of therapy and now rejuvenation of an elderly brain. Additional to this, i am glad that we have started to think of a more moral use for games rather than just killing people online and gaming for hours on end.

    However, i just have a question. When you say that they become better at remembering information, does that imply information that they struggled to remember before or new information that is presented to them?

    If only the latter, then it would be an amazing advancement if they could create a similar method that would allow old memories to be remembered just as efficiently.

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