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It's official. Gaming keeps your brain young.
Waterlily
Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
"The latest research was the product of a four-year $300,000 study done at the University of California, San Francisco. Neuroscientists there, led by Dr. Adam Gazzaley, worked with developers to create NeuroRacer, a relatively simple video game in which players drive and try to identify specific road signs that pop up on the screen, while ignoring other signs deemed irrelevant.
One of the main early findings of the study reinforced just how challenging it is to multitask successfully, particularly as people age. People in their 20s experienced a 26 percent drop in performance when they were asked to try to drive and identify signs at the same time (rather than just identify the signs without driving). For people in their 60s to 80s, the performance drop was 64 percent.
But after the older adults trained at the game, they became more proficient than untrained people in their 20s. The performance levels were sustained for six months, even without additional training. Also, the older adults performed better at memory and attention tests outside the game."
Comments
It depends on the game.
If its a simple kill and fetch quest in a mmo, that also does not need proper skill rotation due to simplicity, then i doubt it would be stimulating enough. Also if the style if quests are ad inifitum that style and a player spends unhealthy hours sitting the whole time, it would be even worse than watching tv. Since people have died from binge gaming.
I would take this with a grain of salt.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
This isn't a study with rats, it's a study with humans.
They showed changes in the brain with electroencephalography, changes in theta that relate to attention.
This isn't merely "getting good at the game", their brain is being rewired.
This is also not the first study that has shown this, this is the umptieth study that has shown this.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Is that why my wife thinks I'm childish when I play games and is still waiting for me to "grow up".
ps. Not gonna happen, and I've told her as much.
How can some people read about a scientific result, and then misunderstand it so completely?
What scientist discovered: Playing a game they made specifically for brain-exercise looks like it's good for brain, at least when done the amount they tested
How OP expanded the result: That proves that playing any game/games, for any amount of time, is always good for brain
I never said "for any amount of time".
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Comparing humans to lab rats is becomeing increasingly unfair given that the lab rats of choice these days are increasingly a breed called the Sprague Dawley...Which may very well be the most tolerant mammal in existence. These things are pretty much over breed to be almost predisposed to being poked, prodded and prompted. Just about every one of these rats is not much different from the last. And rat one will usually behave like right two every time without fail.
The fact that their trying there experiments on humans as first resort is encouraging...But, I still trust flat neuroscience over abstractualization on mere observances. Especially when you have the same people looking at something for too long and hoping something comes of it. Something that will get them enough notoriety to live the dream and have cup of noodles for breakfast lunch and dinner instead of bag ramen in their shared studio apartment. I am sure after a while some of them want to reach a conclusion to get out of the commitment (I would - "yes...water wings cause cancer....can I go now? And about that check? I'd like to eat this week").
In any case it is a bit of a leap to attribute enhanced multitasking performance and increased retention to video games and not just to mass repetition.
It's embarrassing reading articles like these.
People can raise their IQ, SAT, etc. scores as well with enough practice.
It doesn't mean they necessarily become smarter, but have memorized the same routine/algorithm.
I'm sure a chimp would be able to do as well, if not better than humans at most games if given enough incentive and practice.
Oderint, dum metuant.
This could be a slanted survey.Example if they test the two age groups prior but only test the older people now and later,then obviously the older people would have simply become more accustomed to the test and would have nothing to do with gaming.
PS they have yet to find a cure for the common cold,so scientists and doctors alike are pretty much quacks with quack theories.
You need look no further than the long lasting debate over Sucrose good or bad,people can make tests and results read what ever they want them to read.Making sure results are astonishing or catch's people's eyes is the trick to getting more funding and doing more research.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
People do know about the scientific method right? Because I long ago accepted that no reporting agency on Earth does.
Before a study is considered to have merit, another group must independently conduct a similar study and get similar results. One study does never a fact make. And in fact over the last few decades there have been plenty of studies which were reported as breakthroughs and later proven to be wrong or flawed by follow up studies.
Its pretty amazing how little people actually read of this post or the article. This was a study, not a survey first of all. It included the scientific method.
This study is designed to be repeated. Hence its an official study, its also a study that has been done before using different methods.
I know you are but what am I?
lol, I get the same from my wife.
I tell her my theme song for life is "I'm a toy 'r Us kid"
Oh ****...
My wife CANT read this, after so many years i finally convince her that i just born this way...
Semantics. "Getting good at the game" is a process that requires the associated synapses to strengthen (and weaken in balance), the so-called "rewiring". Those physical changes result in changes to the amplitude of the theta rhythms they're observing. The same is true of the rats in a maze.
No it isn't. I've never even heard the Mozart Effect mentioned outside of a joking context -- the results were never confirmed in subsequent studies, as far as I'm aware. This study is merely saying that practicing a task makes you better at said task (and perhaps related tasks, given enough practice), and that video games are no exception to this. The Mozart Effect claimed that listening to music would improve test scores on unrelated material, no?
Do you work with Sprague-Dawleys? I can't speak about that specific breed with much experience, but I work with Long-Evans rats every day (also bred in labs for nearly a century now), and they show a lot of individuality. The difficulty with generalizing results of rat studies to humans is less about their biology and more about how much more complex our living environments are, in comparison.
This applies to all things, not just games, either way well said...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson