Toril Pilar, Reales José M, Mayas Julia, Ballesteros Soledad
Studies of Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Group, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)Madrid, Spain; Department of Basic Psychology II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)Madrid, Spain.
Studies of Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Group, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)Madrid, Spain; Department of Methodology of the Behavioral Sciences, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)Madrid, Spain.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 May 6;10:206. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00206. eCollection 2016.
In this longitudinal intervention study with experimental and control groups, we investigated the effects of video game training on the visuospatial working memory (WM) and episodic memory of healthy older adults. Participants were 19 volunteer older adults, who received 15 1-h video game training sessions with a series of video games selected from a commercial package (Lumosity), and a control group of 20 healthy older adults. The results showed that the performance of the trainees improved significantly in all the practiced video games. Most importantly, we found significant enhancements after training in the trained group and no change in the control group in two computerized tasks designed to assess visuospatial WM, namely the Corsi blocks task and the Jigsaw puzzle task. The episodic memory and short-term memory of the trainees also improved. Gains in some WM and episodic memory tasks were maintained during a 3-month follow-up period. These results suggest that the aging brain still retains some degree of plasticity, and that video game training might be an effective intervention tool to improve WM and other cognitive functions in older adults.
在这项设有实验组和对照组的纵向干预研究中，我们调查了电子游戏训练对健康老年人视觉空间工作记忆（WM）和情景记忆的影响。参与者为19名老年志愿者，他们接受了15次为时1小时的电子游戏训练课程，训练使用从商业软件包（Lumosity）中挑选出的一系列电子游戏，另有一个由20名健康老年人组成的对照组。结果显示，受训者在所有练习过的电子游戏中的表现都有显著提高。最重要的是，我们发现，在旨在评估视觉空间WM的两项计算机化任务，即科西方块任务和拼图任务中，训练组在训练后有显著提高，而对照组没有变化。受训者的情景记忆和短期记忆也有所改善。在为期3个月的随访期内，一些WM和情景记忆任务中的收获得以保持。这些结果表明，衰老的大脑仍保留一定程度的可塑性，并且电子游戏训练可能是改善老年人WM和其他认知功能的有效干预工具。
