TECH: Scientists have created a video game that improves short-term memory in older people

What if video games weren’t just a fun way to pass our leisure time, they had a real effect on our cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties? This is a promis­ing new music rhythm game that not only teach­es you how to play the drums, but also improves your short-term memory.

Forty-sev­en adults between the ages of 60 and 79 were divid­ed into groups that played a musi­cal rhythm game (“Rhyth­mic­i­ty”) and a reg­u­lar alpha­bet soup game. .

Dif­fer­ences between the two groups were evi­dent, with increas­ing rhyth­mic­i­ty, visu­al recog­ni­tion and selec­tive atten­tion tar­get­ing influ­enced short-term mem­o­ry as test­ed in the face recog­ni­tion exercise.

“As expect­ed, only the rhythm train­ing group showed improve­ment in short-term mem­o­ry in the face recog­ni­tion task, thus pro­vid­ing impor­tant evi­dence that musi­cal rhythm train­ing ben­e­fits non-musi­cal task per­for­mance,” the researchers said. described in the pub­lished paper.

Devel­oped with for­mer Grate­ful Dead drum­mer Mick­ey Hart, Rhyth­mic­i­ty uses visu­al cues to train you to play rhythms on your tablet. Tem­po, com­plex­i­ty, accu­ra­cy, etc. were adjust­ed to the play­er’s progress.

The fea­ture of this game is that the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el can be changed accord­ing to the play­er, and the play­er’s progress can be encour­aged with­out impair­ing the play­ing experience.

Post-train­ing analy­sis was per­formed using EEG dur­ing an unfa­mil­iar face recog­ni­tion task. EEG mea­sure­ments also con­firmed increased activ­i­ty in the supe­ri­or pari­etal lobe, a brain region asso­ci­at­ed with read­ing music and visu­al short-term memory.

Analy­sis of brain activ­i­ty while play­ing games in the lab (UCSF)
“It was sur­pris­ing that there was no improve­ment in mem­o­ry at all,” says Theodore Zandt, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co (UCSF).

“It has a very strong mem­o­ry-train­ing com­po­nent and has gen­er­al­ized to oth­er forms of memory.”

The researchers behind this study have been busy work­ing in the field since 2013. They devel­oped a game called Neu­ro­Rac­er. The game has been shown to be able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve impaired men­tal per­for­mance in old­er adults and improve sus­tained atten­tion and work­ing mem­o­ry in just four weeks.

This was fol­lowed by a game called “Body Brain Train­er,” which a recent study found could improve blood pres­sure, bal­ance and alert­ness in old­er adults. In this case, heart rate data is con­stant­ly sent to the soft­ware, so the game pro­gress­es accord­ing to the phys­i­cal fit­ness of the participants.

In addi­tion, it has been con­firmed that the game “Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Maze”, which explores spa­tial paths, improves long-term mem­o­ry in the elder­ly with 4 weeks of training.

Cog­ni­tive decline is com­mon as we age, but games like this show us that there are ways to keep our brains spinning.

“These games all use the same basic adap­tive algo­rithm and approach, but they use com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties,” says UCSF neu­ro­sci­en­tist Adam Gazzaley.