Can Video Games Help Cognitive Functioning in Older Adults?

A new study suggests that some video games may actually help older adults sharpen their mental skills.

The game that requires players to multitask and juggle several things at one time gives participants the opportunity to involve themselves in several cognitive functions.

For instance, the study notes that participants were asked to keep a car centered in one lane and move at the same speed as they also tried to quickly identify signs that were flashed onto a screen.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, show through a series of experiments how age can greatly interfere with the mind's ability to focus and grasp many activities at hand.

Fortunately the study suggests that some video games could play a crucial role in the diagnosis and treatment of various mental problems that often occur with age.

"I think people are soon going to use video games to collect data and to train [the brain]," said Dr. John Krakauer, director of the Brain, Learning, Animation and Movement Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, via the study. "I think it's very promising. I think it's going to happen."

The study looked at healthy adults who were able to think and remember normally for their age. Yet researchers tried to see if the videogame NeuroRacer could potentially benefit people with ADHD or depression--both conditions that can make focusing and multitasking rather difficult.

The game works a couple of different ways. For instance, it gets more complicated the more times you succeed. Yet when participants become frustrated with everything, it lowers the level of difficulty. It has 3-D imagery that helps draw people into the learning environment, and it involves a range of multitasking, as previously mentioned, through winding roads while pointing out and identifying road signs.

Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist and director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of San Francisco, who led the new research, is working with a game-design company, Akili Interactive Labs of Boston, in order to help commercialize similar games that reach out to ADHD, depression and healthy aging.

Gazzaley notes that he is also hoping to make the game more accessible to others in the future.

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Nature.