Research has previously shown that playing three-dimensional video games can improve eye-hand coordination and reaction time, but new findings out of UC Irvine indicate it can also boost the formation of memories.
The new research by UCI neurobiologists, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience today, may lead to unlocking novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer from dementia, according to the university.
Craig Stark and Dane Clemenson of UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory recruited non-gamer college students to play either a video game with a passive, two-dimensional environment (“Angry Birds”) or one with an intricate, 3-D setting (“Super Mario 3D World”) for 30 minutes per day over two weeks. Before and after the two-week period, the students took memory tests that engaged the brain’s hippocampus, the region associated with complex learning and memory.
The test subjects were given a series of pictures of everyday objects to study. Then they were shown images of the same objects, new ones and others that differed slightly from the original items and asked to categorize them. Recognition of the slightly altered images requires the hippocampus, Stark explained, and his earlier research had demonstrated that the ability to do this clearly declines with age.
Students playing the 3-D video game improved their scores on the memory test, while the 2-D gamers did not. The boost was not small either; memory performance increased by about 12 percent, the same amount it normally decreases between the ages of 45 and 70.
Clemson, a postdoctoral scholar, explains “the 3-D games have a few things the 2-D ones do not. They’ve got a lot more spatial information in there to explore. Second, they’re much more complex, with a lot more information to learn. Either way, we know this kind of learning and memory not only stimulates but requires the hippocampus.”
Stark, a professor of neurobiology & behavior, adds more research will be needed to determine what it is exactly about 3-D games that better stimulate the hippocampus. “It’s quite possible that by explicitly avoiding a narrow focus on a single … cognitive domain and by more closely paralleling natural experience, immersive video games may be better suited to provide enriching experiences that translate into functional gains,” he says.
His team's research is funded by grants from the Dana Foundation, the National Institute on Aging and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
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