You may think playing video games is just a frivolous pastime, but it could strengthen your brain if it’s a new activity for you. Both younger and older participants in a research study improved their scores on a memory test after they started playing a video game every day.
In the study, groups of college students and adults in their seventies and eighties were trained to play the immersive video game Super Mario 3D World or the two-dimensional game Angry Birds half an hour daily for two weeks. Before and after the game-playing period, participants took a memory test designed to activate the hippocampus, which is stimulated when you navigate an unfamiliar environment and is important to the formation of new memories.
Among both age groups, the subjects who played Super Mario improved their test scores by approximately 12 percent—about the same percentage a typical score on the test decreases between the ages of 45 and 70. “It basically reversed 20 years’ worth of cognitive decline,” says Craig Stark, PhD, professor of neurobiology and behavior at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine, who led the study. His research team has since found similar cognitive benefits from playing the world-building online game Minecraft. (Test scores did not improve among study participants who played the simpler Angry Birds.)
The video game results indicate that “an enriched environment” can have the same positive effects on human brains that had already been confirmed in animal studies. “When we give [animals] something new to do, explore, and play with, we see improvements in areas of the brain associated with memory, such as the hippocampus,” says Dr. Stark.
Memory loss in older people could have something to do with their not usually being exposed to new things. “As we age, we often lead less-rich lives,” says Dr. Stark. “There may be a burst of activity after retirement, but then maybe you’ve lost some of your friends or a spouse, you’re not getting out as much, and your world shrinks.”
The memory improvement in his video game studies doesn’t tend to last long after the participants stop playing the game regularly, and it may drop off if people continue playing, since the games would become easier and less challenging. “But what we’ve learned is that exploring a new world, whether in video games or reality, is a really good way to give your hippocampus a whole bunch of new stuff to learn,” Dr. Stark says. “And it doesn’t have to be a chore.”
You can also boost brain health by doing some new physical activity, says Jose Posas, MD, FAAN, a sports neurologist at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans. “Exercise is about feeding your muscles, your heart, and your lungs, but also feeding your brain novel experiences,” Dr. Posas says. “If you switch up activities, that may mitigate some of the neurodegenerative issues we see in an aging population. If you’re a jogger, try swimming. If you’re a swimmer, try cycling.
“Having different input from the proprioceptive fibers, which tell your brain where your body is in space, and the vestibular fibers, which tell it where your head is in space, keeps the brain from stagnating,” he explains.
If video games or a new sport don’t appeal to you, explore unfamiliar areas of your town on foot, try playing an instrument or learning a language, or test out a virtual reality headset, suggests Dr. Stark. “Just go out and do new, neat stuff.”
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