Game helps the brain work better

Strategy games can help the elderly to improve their memory, reasoning and other thinking skills.

A gaming lady with Nintendo's Wii device.Photo: Daily Mail.

Dr. Arthur F. Kramer, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois (USA), said that tactical games bring many benefits to brain activity, especially for the elderly. To test the hypothesis, he and his colleagues invited 40 elderly people aged 60-79 to take a test.

The team asked volunteers to perform a number of tests to assess memory, reasoning and other thinking skills. Then they divided the instruments into two groups. The first group to exercise and participate in simple recreational activities does not need to use complex calculations of the brain.

The second group is instructed to play Rise of Nations, a strategy game in which players build an empire and annex other countries to dominate the world. Your playing schedule is designed so that the total playing time is 23 hours in a month. In order to win this game, players must perform multiple tasks at the same time as building houses, operating the economy, finding food for the people, deploying troops outside the battlefield, diplomatic relations with other countries.

After a month, the team asked both groups to perform other tests with the same difficulty the previous time. The results showed that the game players achieved higher scores than the first time, while the results of the second group only changed slightly. In particular, the gaming team excelled over the other group in the ability to remember, deduce and handle situations.

Arthur said he will conduct more tests to see if the impact on Rise of Nations players will exist for a long time. In addition, he wanted to know if other strategy games would help improve such thinking.

Meanwhile, many other studies have shown that older people can improve brain performance both physically and mentally thanks to activities such as reading, writing, puzzle, foreign language learning.