Estimates vary, but the general consensus is that around a third of all humans alive today play video games. When it comes to developed economies like the United States and the United Kingdom, that fraction rises to about half. Whatever way you look at it, there are billions of people playing games around the world.
Almost everyone plays games for fun and entertainment. Some people do it to blow off steam at the end of a day whilst others do it as a way to socialise with friends. However, is gaming also providing a boost for the player’s grey matter?
Practicing Mathematics
Some people love working with numbers and can do complex calculations in their heads whilst others tremble at the mere thought of having to work out a sum. However, games have a way of getting you practising your arithmetic skills without you realising it.
Scrabble, despite being a word game, gets players practising their mental math. Each letter has its own value and these are combined when you make a word to give you a word score that you add to your total score. The double and triple word and letter bonus squares add an extra layer of complexity as you must perform both multiplication and addition in your head with each round.
Testing Your Memory and Recall
You probably know someone can remember everything from obscure historical facts to what we had for lunch on Friday, March 7, 2003 but you also likely know a few people who would lose to a goldfish in a memory contest.
Like with all skills, some people are just naturally gifted at remembering things and others find that it doesn’t come as easily. However, playing games can help you to build your memory skills.
For example, many card games involve some form of memory requirement. In gin rummy, go fish, crazy eights, and even snap, remembering where you’ve seen cards come up can help you to make better decisions later in the game.
Using basic or perfect strategy to play games like blackjack also requires very good memory and recall. Blackjack is one of the world’s most popular card games thanks to online platforms like PokerStars Casino offering a diverse range of variants amongst their hundreds of other titles. These strategies require you to remember the optimal decision to make based on every possible card combination so that you can maximise the odds you get for each hand.
Many video games that have power-ups located in predetermined spots on a level or map can also test your memory. Learning where these are can be helpful when you need that health boost, extra life, or new weapon or skill to keep going in the game.
Hand-Eye Coordination and Reactions
Hand-eye coordination is an important skill that is required for all sorts of areas in life. Driving, cooking, and writing are three basic things that you need to have good hand-eye coordination.
Playing video games has been proven to improve hand-eye coordination, In a study by the University of Toronto, regular players of Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed were pitted against non-gamers in a series of sensorimotor tasks.
The participants were required to use a computer mouse to trace a moving object on a screen. Those in the gamer group were found to improve their accuracy much quicker than the non-gamer group.
Another study showed that gamers had more brain cell connections in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the left frontal eye field. These are the areas of our brains that are responsible for visual-motor information and judging how we respond to external stimuli.
Other studies have concluded that players of video games have faster reaction times, likely developed through the fast reactions required in fast-paced games where split section decisions are required and your choices can mean the difference between virtual life and death.
The Verdict
Whilst games are inherently fun and entertainment is the primary reason we play them, doing so can have cognitive benefits. In some cases, research has even shown that these benefits manifest in physical changes inside the brain, demonstrating just how fundamental these benefits are.
