If you, like myself, have been a video game nerd for about as long as you’ve been able to talk, walk, and form coherent memories, then you’ll love this one.
According to some research conducted earlier this year at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, all that time spent gaming in your childhood could have paid off in more ways than you might have expected.
Big Bad Video Games
The advantages of video gaming have long been contested, presumably since they became all the rage around three decades ago. Seeing as they’re generally so much fun, people - especially kids - just want to play them all the dang time. As you might expect, that has led parents all over the globe to quiver at the thought of all the Big Bad Things gaming is doing to their children’s brains. Timmy should be out there climbing a tree instead, right?
Sure, if that’s what Timmy takes pleasure in doing. And yes, of course there are (also very contested) limits to the amount of time Timmy should be spending in front of the PS4, and the types of games Timmy should have access to depending on his age. He should also be aware that trees and nature are fun too, and that balance is important. But the fact that he wants and loves to be a gamer is really cool, and more than that, could actually be beneficial for that brain of his.
The Study
In June this year, neuroscience researchers Marc Palaus and his three research buddies published a fascinating study that revealed some unexpected results. They set out to see whether a combination of video game training and transcranial magnetic stimulation - or TMS - could enhance cognitive functioning.
TMS is a kind of non-invasive brain stimulation which is often used to alter (and ideally enhance) the firing of brain cells within targeted brain areas. Hopefully, certain cognitive functions related to those areas will also be enhanced as a result.
There’s also some evidence out there that suggests the positive effects of TMS can be amplified if it is applied directly after the completion of some skill training tasks. So the authors thought, why not use a video game as the skill training task? After all, there’s certainly enough evidence suggesting that games do entail the use of a wide range of different cognitive skills simultaneously. They’re also easy to get ahold of, generally allow you to adjust the level of difficulty (and thus the level of cognitive demand), and are, of course, pretty fun.
