Stark Craig E L, Clemenson Gregory D, Aluru Ujwal, Hatamian Nikki, Stark Shauna M
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
Front Sports Act Living. 2021 Jul 5;3:685286. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2021.685286. eCollection 2021.
Concerns are often raised about the impact that playing video games may have on cognition and behavior, whether gameplay is intense and protracted as with competitive Esports or whether it is more casual gameplay. Work in our lab and others, however, has shown that at least some classes of games can improve memory function. In particular, playing immersive 3D games that provide rich experiences and novelty improve memory on tasks that rely upon the hippocampus in effects that mirror the effects of "environmental enrichment" in numerous rodent studies. Our goal in the present study was to determine whether even modest amounts of gameplay (~30 min/day for 4 weeks) would result in improved memory performance in middle-aged adults. Not only is this demographic potentially highly receptive to gaming (they make up a significant portion of Esports viewers and of game players), but interventions in middle age may be a prime time for reducing later age-related cognitive decline. Here, we found that the benefits in middle age paralleled effects previously observed in young adults as playing , showing improved memory performance on a hippocampal dependent memory task.
人们经常担心玩电子游戏可能对认知和行为产生的影响，无论是像竞技电子竞技那样激烈和持久的游戏玩法，还是更休闲的游戏玩法。然而，我们实验室和其他机构的研究表明，至少某些类型的游戏可以改善记忆功能。特别是，玩提供丰富体验和新奇感的沉浸式3D游戏，能改善依赖海马体的任务的记忆，其效果与众多啮齿动物研究中的“环境富集”效果相似。我们在本研究中的目标是确定即使是适度的游戏时间（每天约30分钟，持续4周）是否会导致中年成年人的记忆表现得到改善。这一人群不仅可能对游戏高度接受（他们占电子竞技观众和游戏玩家的很大一部分），而且中年时期的干预可能是减少晚年与年龄相关的认知衰退的黄金时期。在这里，我们发现中年人的益处与之前在年轻人中观察到的玩游戏的效果相似，即在依赖海马体的记忆任务上表现出改善的记忆表现。
