Gaming As A Kid May Lead To Improved Memory As An Adult, Study Finds

“Those games are gonna rot your brain!” they said. “Do something productive!” they said. “Those games aren’t gonna help you later in life!” they said.

Well, looky here! According to a new study that explores links between gaming and cognition, it turns out that gaming from an early age may help promote improved working memory later on in life.

In a new study, which features in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona trained volunteers to play “Super Mario 64” — a game that researchers have previously shown to induce structural changes in parts of the brain associated with executive function and spatial memory.

The new study found that people who played video games as children showed greater improvements in their working memory than those who did not, suggesting that video games can have long lasting benefits for cognition.

“Video gaming as a child related to improvements in memory” – MedicalNewsToday

Let’s gooooooooo! Cue the duckboats!!! Gaming 1, School 0! Ga-ming! Ga-ming! Ga-ming!

To be honest, my mom was pretty supportive of my gaming habits when I was a kid, so I can’t complain much. She once told me that she heard it “improved hand-eye coordination” from a friend when I was a kid, and I guess that was all she needed to hear.

For the most part, though, gaming is still treated by many people and media outlets as the worst thing that someone could possibly do, so it’s nice to see the scientists rack up another point for the good guys back home.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go continue working on my memory banks.