5 surprising benefits of gaming for all ages

Fans of shooters make better decisions faster

Scientists from the University of Rochester have conducted a series of studies and concluded that video games make gamers more sensitive to what is happening around them. And this applies not only to virtual worlds.

A wide range of general skills that can be useful in everyday life, such as multitasking, reading small print, recognizing people in a crowd, or navigating a city, are improved.

One of the experiments involved several dozen people aged 18-25 who were far from video games. Some played shooters, others played a family simulator. After that, the subjects passed a series of special tests for decision-making speed. The first group coped with the task 25 percent faster than the second, without affecting accuracy.

The authors shed light on the nature of this phenomenon. People make decisions based on probabilities that they constantly calculate in their heads. The brain accumulates crumbs of visual and auditory information and eventually assembles a whole picture that is perceived as an accurate decision.

Shooter fans reached the required threshold faster because their visual and auditory analyzers were more efficient.

Gamers have better control over their dreams

Jayne Gackenbach, a well-known psychologist at Canada's MacEwan University, compares video games to dreams, as both are alternative realities. Although dreams are biologically generated in the human mind, and video games are technologically generated by computers and game consoles, the parallels are still relevant.

Based on her research, Jayne says that gamers are more likely to experience such an unusual phenomenon as lucid dreaming. In this state, a person realizes that he or she is dreaming and can control its content to some extent. Scientists directly link this to the experience that gamers get in virtual reality.

Jayne develops this topic and describes the well-known theory that dreams imitate threatening situations in everyday life. Nightmares help the body to hone its defense skills in a safe environment, so that later, if necessary, it can apply them in a real situation.

Gackenbach studied the dream reports of 35 men and 63 women and found that gamers were more likely to perceive the threat in their dreams and sometimes turn the situation around and fight the source of the danger. In other words, they turned a nightmare scenario into a fun raid.

Games make people wiser and kinder

Strategy games can influence the humanity and behavioral thinking of gamers in real life. This is the opinion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose employees have created Quanary, an educational game for high school students that raises the fundamental issue of the ethical development of children.

In the game, you manage a space colony and solve dilemmas that arise between settlers cut off from Earth. Your goal is to understand the details of the dispute by talking to all parties of the conflict.

You have to separate facts from subjective opinions, find common ground, and offer your own way out of the situation. There are no right or wrong decisions in the game. Each side has its share of truth, and you have to understand the position of each settler.

Video games improve your eyesight

High-speed first-person games improve the player's eyesight. Previously, it was believed that the ability to recognize small differences in shades of gray was not trainable. Daphne Bavelier's research suggests otherwise.

Fast-paced games use the full power of the human visual system, the brain adapts to new conditions, and skills are transferred to life outside the monitor. Moreover, the positive effect persists even two years after quitting. Daphne believes that video games can be useful in the treatment of amblyopia, which is characterized by a deterioration in the transmission of visual images to the brain.

Video games improve cognitive abilities

This is evidenced by the results of an experiment conducted at the University of California. A group of neuroscientists led by Adam Gazzaley developed NeuroRacer, a seemingly simple arcade racing game in which the player drives a car with his left hand and reacts to appearing road signs with his right hand (or ignores them).

A group of people aged 60 to 85 played the game for six months, 12 hours a month. After that, the scientists tested a number of mental abilities of the subjects.

It turned out that the training was not in vain: volunteer gamers were better at multitasking. This is quite logical. Even more unexpectedly, the elderly became better at memorizing information and holding attention. The effect persisted for several months after the experiments were completed.

The results are confirmed by electroencephalogram data. During training, low-frequency theta waves associated with attention increased in people's brains. Dr. Gazzaley notes that the activity in the prefrontal cortex of older people has become similar to that of younger people.