Playing video games may be associated with improved cognition, a large-scale study has found.
The surprise findings are part of the Brain and Body study, a collaboration between Western University, Canada, and the Science and Industry Museum for the Manchester Science Festival.
Over 2,000 participants from around the world registered for the study, which asked them to complete a lifestyle survey followed by brain games that are both fun and accurately measure different aspects of cognition, such as memory, attention, reasoning and verbal abilities.
After around 75 minutes, participants were given feedback about their cognitive performance and the results were analysed, when the effects of lifestyle activities on aspects of brain health could be weighed up.
The study, spearheaded by celebrated neuroscientist Professor Adrian Owen of Western University, showed that among roughly 1000 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.
However, exercise was seen to improve mental wellbeing. “Playing video games was associated with improved cognitive abilities (but not better or worse mental health), whereas more physical activity (that is, more than 150 minutes per week, in accordance with the WHO guidelines) was associated with improved mental health (but not better or worse cognitive health),” commented Prof Owen, who has spent more than a decade developing the tests.
Prof Owen quantified the cognitive benefits of playing video games for five hours every week as “about the same as being 4.3 years younger. In other words, people who played video games around 10 hours per week performed cognitively like people 8.7 years younger than their age (who did not play video games).”
When it came to the impact of mental health on those people who did not meet the WHO’s recommendation for physical activity, “they were twice as likely to suffer from depression and 1.5 times more likely to have a generalized anxiety disorder,” said Prof Owen.
Despite the seemingly obvious examples of a brain-body connection, like how being ‘hangry’ affects the ability to concentrate, stress makes muscles tense, or steady breathing calms the mind, relatively little is understood about how brain and body affect each other.
Completing the survey helped the Western University team to build a better understanding of how lifestyle relates to the long term health of our brains, “and could in future help us choose activities that promote healthy cognitive aging,” said Prof Owen.
Details of the findings will be presented by Prof Owen himself in the museum on 19 October as part of the Manchester Science Festival, running from 18-27 October at the Science and Industry Museum and across the city.
Visitors to the festival will also have the opportunity to take part in a pilot study to follow up these results. While the online survey focused on long term effects, the Western team will be inviting festivalgoers to help them in a pilot study of whether there are short term improvements to cognition as a result of exercise and gaming.
Prof Owen also provides a commentary about how the brain handles sound and light within an artistic commission for the Festival by the Squidsoup collective. Inspired by the work of Piet Mondrian, “State of Mind” is a three-dimensional arrangement of LED lights within an intriguing and informative soundscape that is currently on display at the Science and Industry Museum as part of Manchester Science Festival 2024.
