For years now, video games have removed the stigma of serving only for fun. Several studies have shown that not only do they improve our dexterity with our fingers or make our imagination fly, but that they can modulate our brain, helping it learn better. A recent Spanish investigation carried out with the video game Professor Layton has indicated that it can even modify its morphology and increase the volume of brain gray matter.
A few months ago an experiment carried out at Michigan State University, United States, with 500 twelve-year-old children, certified that those who played video games were more creative when writing and drawing . Other studies have certified the improvement in the development of certain skills, such as piloting airplanes or driving cars. Two researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Complutense University of Madrid have gone one step further and analyzed how video games influence the plasticity of the brain.
To carry out the research, Roberto Colom, professor of psychology at the UAM, and Mª Ángeles Quiroga, professor of psychology at the UCM, used a famous puzzle and riddle game, Professor Layton , to observe how the brain of a group of volunteers changed. In the first place, the subjects were selected: people accustomed to using the Nintendo DS but who had never played with that specific video game. Subsequently, the verbal, spatial and reasoning abilities of the players were evaluated. And finally the experiment itself was carried out. The volunteers had to play a video game for a maximum of 16 hours for a month in a laboratory control. At that time they had to solve riddles, puzzles, hieroglyphs, problems, etc., using their intelligence. After this period, it was analyzed what changes had occurred in the brain thanks to magnetic resonance imaging.
Increased volume of gray matter
After the month of play, the scientists were able to observe a change in the gray matter volume of the volunteers, as well as an improvement in the integrity of the white matter, which facilitates the coordination of different brain regions. They were also able to observe that last month, the resting connectivity of the network of neurons had increased, which prepared the individual for future intellectual activity.
In other words, as if it were a gym, after a 16-hour workout over a month playing with Professor Layton, the brains of the volunteers had changed, it had become stronger . As Roberto Colom himself explains, “at the intelligence level, internal factors are very important, but external factors can contribute in a very positive way. Video games can enhance the learning process,” he concludes.
In fact, according to the research carried out, after the test the volunteers had improved both verbal comprehension and topographic orientation, planning, reasoning, visual perception and visual and spatial processing.
The study by Colom and Quiroga confirms the plasticity of the brain, the capacity for modulation by external agents and the importance of learning and “brain training” . But not only that, but they corroborate the benefits that logic and intelligence games, such as Professor Layton, produce in the brain, both cognitively and physically.
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