Researchers have compared the effects on memory of 3D and 2D video games. They believe that the former could help young people to maintain memory capacities.
Do some very specific video games have hidden virtues on the performance of our memory? In any case, this is what two researchers from the Center for Neurobiology at the University of California, Drs Craig Stark and his Danish colleague Dane Clemenson, suggest in a study published in the journal The Journal of Neurosciences.
They conducted an experiment to assess the effect of 3D games on the functioning of the hippocampus, a brain structure that plays a central role in learning, memory and spatial navigation.
During the two weeks of their experiment, they invited a first group of “non-gamer” students to play 30 minutes a day in a 2D game, the famous Angry Birds, in which the player takes control of multicolored birds which try to recover the eggs that were stolen from them.
The second group played for its part in a very well-known 3D game: Super Mario 3D World. Both groups were subjected before and after the experiment to tests evaluating their memory, and more particularly the aspect of memory called episodic. This is the one that is linked to memories included in a context (dates, places, emotions …) and which is more directly processed by the hippocampus …
Anticipate the effects of age
And the results of the experiment are well known. They show that students who played Super Mario 3D World improved their memory test score by 12%. This figure, not found among Angry Birds players, corresponds to the loss of abilities between 45 and 70 years old.
These data are all the more interesting given that episodic memory is a function that “declines with age, which is why it is so difficult to learn new names or to find the place where you put your words. key, ”says Dr. Craig in comments reported by Relaxnews.
He goes on to say that “3D games have a lot more spatial information to explore. They are much more complex, with a lot more information to integrate. In any case, we know that this type of learning and memory not only stimulates the hippocampus but it demands it ”.
Finally, the researchers say that these types of games have the particularity of immersing the person in a universe which mobilizes many cognitive processes, at the same time visual, spatial, emotional, circuits of motivation, concentration, critical sense, problem solving and memory work. “This wealth of information could lead to improved cognitive functions,” concludes Dr Craigh.
Results also found in the past with the elderly in whom video games improve cognitive performance. Everyone at your controls!
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