Turns out all of Nintendo's “Train Your Brain!" hoopla may not be hoopla after all. Reuters reports that a new study shows older adults who played a videogame for a month demonstrated improved scores on tests of their cognitive functions, including memory, reasoning, and multi-tasking.
But here's some not-so-good news for Nintendo: The game they played was not, as you might initially expect, Brain Age. The study included 40 adults in their 60's and 70's, with half of them randomly assigned to play Rise of Nations -- a PC real-time strategy game from 2003 -- for a month, with the other half getting no play time at all. The results: Those assigned to the game showed noticeable gains when given memory, reasoning, and multi-tasking tests.
According to Dr. Arthur F. Kramer, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this is the first published study that showed playing a game can improve the cognitive skills of older adults, and he warned not to read too much into the findings -- although he did call the study “very promising." Kramer said further research will be needed to see if the positive effects persist over time, and whether other similar strategy games would be equally beneficial to play.
But here's some not-so-good news for Nintendo: The game they played was not, as you might initially expect, Brain Age. The study included 40 adults in their 60's and 70's, with half of them randomly assigned to play Rise of Nations -- a PC real-time strategy game from 2003 -- for a month, with the other half getting no play time at all. The results: Those assigned to the game showed noticeable gains when given memory, reasoning, and multi-tasking tests.
According to Dr. Arthur F. Kramer, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this is the first published study that showed playing a game can improve the cognitive skills of older adults, and he warned not to read too much into the findings -- although he did call the study “very promising." Kramer said further research will be needed to see if the positive effects persist over time, and whether other similar strategy games would be equally beneficial to play.
