Scientists Made a Video Game That Boosts Short-Term Memory
in Older Adults
What if, as well as providing a fun way to enjoy our leisure time, video games
could provide real benefits to our cognitive powers? That's the promise of a
new musical rhythm game that can not only teach drumming but also
improve short-term memory. In a study of the game's effects, 47 adults aged
between 60 and 79 years were split into two groups: one playing the musical
rhythm game (called Rhythmicity) and one playing a normal word search
game, for 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week for 8 weeks.
The difference between the two groups was clear: as players progressed in
Rhythmicity, the ways it targeted visual perception and selective attention
had a knock-on effect on short-term memory, as tested through a face
recognition exercise.
"As hypothesized, only the rhythm training group exhibited improved short-
term memory on a face recognition task, thereby providing important
evidence that musical rhythm training can benefit performance on a non-
musical task," write the researchers in their published paper.
Rhythmicity was developed with drummer Mickey Hart, once of the Grateful
Dead, and used visual clues to train participants to play a rhythm on a tablet.
The tempo, complexity, and precision required were all tweaked as players
progressed. Part of what makes the game special is that it can adapt itself to
the person playing it, changing the difficulty level to push the player to
improve without making it so hard that it's going to spoil the gaming
experience.
The post-training analysis was done via electroencephalography (EEG)
during a recognition task involving unknown faces. Rhythmicity players
were better at identifying faces after the eight-week course, and the EEG
readings showed increased activity in the superior parietal lobule
–
the brain
region linked to sight reading music and short-term visual memory.
"That memory improved at all was amazing," says neuroscientist Theodore
Zanto from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "There is a
very strong memory training component to this, and it generalized to other
forms of memory." The researchers behind the study have been busy in this
field since 2013 when they developed a game called NeuroRacer
–
a game
that's been shown able to significantly improve diminished mental faculties
and improve sustained attention and working memory in older adults after
just four weeks.
That was followed by a game called Body-Brain Trainer, which a recent study
has found is able to improve blood pressure, balance, and attention in elderly
people. In that case, heart rate data was constantly being fed back to the
software so the game could adapt to participants' fitness levels.
Another game, the virtual reality Labyrinth which engages users in spacial
wayfinding, has demonstrated that it can improve long-term memory in
older adults after four weeks of training. A decline in cognitive control often
comes with getting older, but these games are evidence that there are ways
to maintain our mental sharpness.
"These games all have the same underlying adaptive algorithms and
approach, but they are using very, very different types of activity. And in all
of them we show that you can improve cognitive abilities in this population,"
says neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley from UCSF.
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