New Study: Video Games Can Make You Smarter

For years, video games have been synonymous with anti-intellectual malaise: the slack-jawed Gen X teenager, staring at the glowing screen for hours, mashing buttons in silence.

Now, a new study in Nature and reported in Forbes magazine may change the way people treat the cutting edge in home entertainment. According to the study's authors - lead by the University of California - San Francisco's Adam Gazzaley - they've developed a game that, over the course of the experiment - significantly improved the short-term memory and attention spans of a group of 46 participants, ages 60-85.

It's important to note that the study's authors didn't simply throw retirees in front of Grand Theft Auto and come back to take IQ tests a few hours later. Rather, they developed a game - NeuroRacer - that was aimed specifically for the task of memory gain. In the game, the player drives a virtual car along a track and, when they see a specific road sign they must press a corresponding button. The trick is that the player must also ignore all other road signs.

As with any good video game, as the player gets better, the game gets more difficult, so as to keep the original challenge fresh.

For the older participants in the study, they "showed increases in a low-frequency brain wave called theta in the prefrontal cortex; and significantly, increases in 'theta bursts' matched those of people in their 20's."

Gazzaley hopes that the study eventually leads to new approaches to the geriatric mental care, including ADHD, dementia, and autism.

While that may be a while off, it's still a good starting point to a discussion on rethinking video games and their relationship to cognitive function. After all, South Korea is the one of the largest consumers of video games per capita in the world, and they also have one of the best school systems.

Correlation may not be the same thing as causation, but if Korea's youth can play video games and compete on the global stage, the next logical step may be to turn those reigns over to the elderly and see what they do.