Culture Post: Study Shows Playing Video Games May Improve Cognitive Performance

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

Playing video games may boost cognitive abilities and exercise can play a role in improving mental health, but not the other way around, a large-scale study has found.

The surprise findings are part of the Brain and Body study, a collaboration between Western University and the Science and Industry Museum for the Manchester Science Festival. A preprint of the work is published on PsyArXiv.

More than 2,000 participants from around the world registered for the study, which asked them to complete a lifestyle survey followed by Creyos online brain games that accurately measure different aspects of cognition, such as memory, attention, reasoning and verbal abilities.

The study, spearheaded by Western’s celebrated neuroscientist Adrian Owen, showed that among approximately 1,000 people who finished all the tasks, playing video games had a positive effect on an individual’s cognition, but did not seem to affect their mental health.

Exercising more than 150 minutes per week, in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, however, was seen to improve mental well-being but had no effect on cognition.

According to results of the study, people who frequently play video games (five or more hours per week for a single type of game) performed cognitively, on average, like people who were 13.7 years younger. Individuals who engaged infrequently with video games (less than 5 hours per week across all kinds of games) performed like people 5.2 years younger.

In terms of mental health, participants who met or exceeded the WHO recommendations of 150 minutes of physical activity per week were 12% more likely to report having no symptoms of depression and 9% more likely to have no symptoms of anxiety.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-playing-video-games-cognitive.html

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