Study finds video game helps older people stay mentally fit

Dec 22, 2008 4:32 PM

The adult take on video games is often pretty negative, clouded by anxiety about offspring who spend hours cloistered in their rooms, capturing alien spaceships and shooting up pixelated villains. But gaming isn't all bad: the good news is that for older people, certain types of strategy-based games may improve mental agility.

A new study looked at 40 adults in their 60s and 70s who hadn't played a video game for at least two years. Half received nearly 24 hours of training on a game called Rise of Nations, which gives players points for building cities, feeding and employing citizens, expanding territory, and creating great works of art, technology, and architecture. The other half didn't play or train on any game.

The researchers used several tests to measure each person's mental abilities at the beginning, middle, and end of the study. They found that gamers became much better and faster at switching between tasks as the study progressed. Their reasoning and ability to hold two or more pieces of information in their short-term memory also improved. They also did better in tests measuring their memory of visual cues and how fast they identified objects that had been rotated.

This isn't the first study to explore possible benefits from game-playing. Other research has shown that playing simple games (like Tetris) can improve older adults' reaction time. But this is the first study to explore how one of the newer, strategy-based games—which involve real-time decision-making and frequent shifts in priorities—might affect the more complex thought processes that tend to wane as we age.

The study was carefully done, but it leaves several questions unanswered. For example, researchers don't know what aspects of the game might have improved people's test scores and if other types of video games would produce similar results. The study was also short (about eight weeks long), so we don't know whether the improvements lasted once people stopped playing the game regularly. Finally, the researchers can't say whether the mental gains noted in the study would translate into improvements in how people handled real-world tasks, such as driving or working in a busy office.

What you need to know. If you'd like to try gaming, do it for pleasure rather than for any possible health benefit. And if you're a real enthusiast, make sure you play in moderation. Too much gaming can mean too little sleep, exercise, and exposure to vitamin D-making sunshine, all of which are essential to good health. And who knows? As you're building that empire, you just might be boosting your brain power.

—Sophie Ramsey, patient editor, BMJ Group

ConsumerReportsHealth.org has partnered with The BMJ Group to monitor the latest medical research and assess the evidence to help you decide which news you should use.

Read more about exergaming, take a look at our blog on the Wii Fit, and find out 5 ways to keep your memory sharp.