Emerging research suggests playing a specifically designed video game can help to reverse some of the negative effects of aging on the brain.
Scientists at University of California, San Francisco used a specially designed 3-D video game to improve cognitive control in healthy older adults.
Researchers say the findings, published this week in Nature, provide a measure of scientific support to the rapidly expanding field of brain fitness.
The research helps to satisfy critics that have called for solid evidence of the cognitive benefits of senior gaming.
In the game, which was developed by the UCSF researchers, participants race a car around a winding track while a variety of road signs pop up.
Drivers are instructed to keep an eye out for a specific type of sign, while ignoring all the rest, and to press a button whenever that particular sign appears.
The need to switch rapidly from driving to responding to the signs – i.e. multitasking – generates interference in the brain that undermines performance.
The researchers found that this interference increases dramatically across the adult lifespan.
But after receiving just 12 hours of training on the game, spread over a month, the 60- to 85-year-old study participants improved their performance until it surpassed that of 20-somethings who played the game for the first time.
The training also improved the participants’ performance in two other important cognitive areas: working memory and sustained attention. And participants maintained their skills at the video games six months after the training had ended.
