Playing brain-training video games may help reverse the natural decline in cognitive abilities among older people, according to scientists.
They found that 60-year-olds who played a custom-designed video game for 12 hours over the course of a month improved their multitasking abilities to levels better than those achieved by 20-year-olds playing the game for the first time. The subjects retained those improvements six months later.
"Through challenging your brain, you can drive plasticity and improve its function," said Adam Gazzaley of the University of California, San Francisco. His team's findings suggest the ageing brain is more "plastic" than previously thought, meaning it retains a greater ability to reshape itself in response to the environment and could therefore be improved with properly designed games.
We are in the phase of orienting and testing ourselves with effects of serious gaming in health.