Why Gaming Matters — How it can delay neurodegeneration

Are you wasting your time when you are playing video games? The most definite answer that you would get from people that have not been born in the same generation where gaming was present would always try to find something negative to say about it. Parents, or adults in higher offices — often feel the need to either moral police or to do the ‘right’ thing and they tend to jump to impulsive decisions without properly researched or informed decisions with a general consensus between two parties to actually fully follow through with implementation.

This small piece will focus on the positive aspect of what gaming can bring to a young adult's mind and how it can improve his/her mind, in the literal sense of slowing down any potential neurological decay. On the other side of the coin, the antagonistic view about would point out issues like addiction, depression; which can be manifested through excessive gaming.

“Important research has already been conducted for decades on the negative effects of gaming, including addiction, depression and aggression, and we are certainly not suggesting that this should be ignored,” said lead author Isabela Granic, PhD, of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. “However, to understand the impact of video games on children’s and adolescents’ development, a more balanced perspective is needed.”

I would like to just push those issues away with a single word — moderation — if you are a responsible parent/guardian/government, the first thing that should be taught is moderation in life.

As said by Hippocrates, “everything in excess is opposed to nature”

How can video games improve memory, a study in (2015), suggested that the exploration of vast and visually stimulating environments within modern-day video games can act as a human correlate of environmental enrichment. Training in such simulation (playing games) resulted in a significant improvement in hippocampus-associated cognition using several behavioral measures. The results suggested that modern-day video games may provide meaningful stimulation to the human hippocampus. Buy all your nieces and yourself a console to play on as soon as possible.

In another study, the researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them, and this benefit doesn’t just make them better at playing video games but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town. Some researchers have proposed that video games possess good learning principles and may promote problem-solving skills.

An interesting finding was discovered in a study of a population of old folks, in which they made groups and some of them played Super Mario, and others did other activities such as playing the piano and some folks did not take part in any activity. All of them were radiologically investigated with brain scans and the ones that played the video games (Super Mario) had the most preserved section of the grey matter.

Specifically when it comes to finding a very niche community and the outreach to the particular individual is difficult, the nice community might be in the gaming genre, and there is a study that supports the notion that individuals with psychological issues and loneliness can perhaps find solace. Specifically, loneliness was negatively related to online bonding, but positively with online bridging capital, highlighting the importance of exploring the constitution of gaming communities to assess their role in promoting varying dimensions of social capital and the associated psychological correlates.