Today, the video game industry enjoys an unprecedented power of seduction. While twenty years ago their target audience was children (in the masculine) and young men, today they are used by entire families, women and even people over 60 years old.
Although the factors that have intervened in this expansion of market niches would be the subject of another separate article, there is at least one principle that can be understood as a cause and at the same time a consequence of this openness towards the diversity of audiences: the response of this market to the concern for physical and psychological well-being in general terms.
This new philosophy can be summarized as: since video games are going to become an important part of our lives, let them at least serve to improve them. If before playing a video game console was equivalent to abstracting from reality, in recent years the wall that separated the use of video games and “real life” has been crumbling. This way of thinking has led to the appearance of numerous “mental gym” type video games that offer us the possibility of playing while improving our skills. cognitive processes that are essential to us in our daily lives (such as speed when discriminating between stimuli, working with several variables at the same time in solving a problem or our ability to focus on a problem). attentional focus and not distract ourselves).
Brain training, more than a Nintendo brand, has become almost a genre of video games. It is no coincidence that the popularization of brain training video games has coincided with the emergence of the Wii and Nintendo DS video game consoles in the market during the 2000s**, both of which were largely responsible for the opening of the video game market** towards a much more varied profile of potential clients.
The customer is everyone
In 2006, the best-selling video game Brain Training appeared in Europe. Dr. Kawashima for nintendo ds . It can be considered something like the head of the Training series, a franchise created by Nintendo whose central axis was the learning and improvement of cognitive skills. Shortly after, the WiiFit series appeared with its own peripheral similar to a scale that is used to practice postural and movement exercises related to yoga, aerobics and other disciplines. The reception of WiiFit by consumers was also more than positive.
The incentives of brain training video games as a “mental gymnastics” tool for our brain are clear: the possibility of creating personalized programs in which each activity works on a specific cognitive function, quick access to this type of activities without having to go outside from home and, of course, the fun factor. On the part of the video game development companies In addition, this type of product allows them to access a large number of clients with high purchasing power, beyond a profile of hardcore gamer which increasingly demands a class of video games that are more aesthetically attractive and with higher production costs. However, you have to ask yourself to what extent it has been proven that they really work.
The truth is that the effectiveness of this type of video games when it comes to improving the performance of cognitive functions It is more than questioned. It seems that, in general, there are few studies that attribute better cognitive performance to the continued use of this type of video game. In the cases in which a statistically significant trend towards improvement in cognitive abilities has been seen, it has been quite modest.
Among the causes that make it difficult to measure possible cognitive improvements is the fact that an improvement in performance when solving the problems posed by the video game does not have to imply an improvement in performance when faced with the problems faced by the game. we face on a daily basis. That is, the adaptation and improvement due to the levels of difficulty posed by the game do not have to be generalizable to other areas of our lives: if I become faster when reacting to a gunman who appears behind some wooden barrels, this improvement may be due to that I have learned the patterns of enemy appearances within the video game, that I recognize the hiding places where a gunman is statistically more likely to appear or simply that my adrenaline levels are automatically affected by the simple fact of starting a game.
None of these adaptations to the video game will help me in other situations in my daily life, and none of them involves an implementation in my brain structures that mediate the rapid reaction to stimuli and attentional selection. This occurs with both Nintendo’s Brain Training video games and the most recent Lumosity .
It seems that, as much as we want to save time and boost our brain while we play, in a certain sense it is still true that what happens in video games stays in video games. The improvement in performance that occurs in them is, at best, generalizable to other situations in our lives to a very low degree. That is why it is normal that mental gymnastics video games are received with skepticism among the scientific community.
However, maintaining a skeptical stance does not mean closing in on the possible advantages that the use of video games can bring to basic and applied psychology. It must be taken into account that a large part of the brain training-type video games that have been tested are not oriented towards healthcare use, but rather towards sales in a very broad market. Almost all of them, like Dr. Kawashima’s own Brain Training, only rely on skilled Marketing campaings when talking about the many beneficial effects that your product can offer us, not in experiments designed specifically to test it. Thus, it is normal that in studies carried out after the fact the results are bad.
Furthermore, the fact that different video games different areas of the brain work with different intensity makes the comparison between studies chaotic and difficult to reach clear conclusions All this means that, although the most that can be said about the brain training that has existed until now is that they sell a lot thanks to the hype, the video games that are to come can be good tools for strengthening mental processes. superiors. Maybe it’s just a matter of doing things right.
Reasons for optimism
It is worth considering how it could be that, given that there is evidence that in our daily reality there are activities that enhance the good performance of our cerebral neocortex, these activities cannot be transferred to the field of video games, a virtual environment in which you can do virtually anything imaginable and with an enviable maturity when it comes to the technologies it uses. The potential of video games is enormous, and yet all of them have a clear limitation, to a greater or lesser extent: as products programmed by the man they are, they lack chaos. All of them have certain designs and playable mechanics that are not always too varied. It is very difficult to find a video game that after eight months does not seem repetitive. If we reinforce the ability of video games to surprise us by presenting unexpected stimuli and tasks of different types that are presented at the same time, it is very possible that our brain will be pushed to the limit and therefore exercised. In this sense, Adam Gazzaley, neurologist at the University of California San Francisco has reason to be optimistic.
In 2009, Gazzaley collaborated with the video game development company LucasArts (famous for its video game series Monkey Island, Rogue Squadron or the acclaimed Grim Fandango) In the development of NeuroRacer . This game consisted of driving a vehicle along winding roads, without leaving the track, and at the same time paying attention to a series of icons that appeared on the screen to press the corresponding button each time one of them appeared. As time passed, these tasks also became more complicated, following an ascending difficulty curve to push the player to the limit of their possibilities. The objective of the video game was to improve the cognitive capacity of elderly people or alleviate the decline of this associated with age.
The idea behind the development of this video game is the following: if even in older people the brain has the ability to change and adapt to the demands of the environment, let’s present them with a complex environment in which they have to activate different brain functions at the same time, emulating what happens in everyday life. It will be this exercise of attending to multiple tasks at the same time that generates more and better neuronal connections in the brain and therefore improves its condition, not the successive presentation of the same type of problems.
To test the effects of this video game on the brain, Gazzaley divided a group of 180 participants between 60 and 85 years old into three groups. Those in one group would play the video game three times a week for a month, those in the second would play the same number of hours a simplified version of the video game in which they would either control the vehicle or press the buttons when seeing the corresponding icon, but not both tasks at the same time, and those in the third group would not play the video game. The results in standardized tests to measure working memory and attentional management showed a significant improvement in these processes.
Furthermore, these results tended to be maintained over time, at least up to 6 months after the experiment without having played NeuroRacer. On the other hand, the bioelectric activity records of the participants obtained by electroencephalogram (EEG) after passing through the experiment tended to resemble that of a 20-year-old person A variation was also shown in measurements of activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is the main neural mediator in the sequencing of orderly, goal-oriented actions, decision making and selective attention, among other things.
Since then, Gazzaley has continued working on similar projects. Project: Evo a video game based on NeuroRacer that appeals to other cognitive functions that were not worked on in its predecessor (in addition to those already worked on in the 2009 video game) can provide even greater advantages. In Body Brain Trainer, Gazzaley uses a camera Xbox Kinect to recognize movements and propose exercises in which physical exercise is related to mental processes, following the philosophy of embodied cognition.
However, none of the experiments that Gazzaley has carried out yet offer complete guarantees, since this requires a sample with many more participants and longer periods of time to experiment. It will take years until we can have authentic brain training video games that have the backing of science, and at the moment large investments in video games have a predilection for the profitable leisure market. In any case, and without detracting from the potential of those previously known as “matamartianos“In the field of neuropsychology, one could say that the benefits that video games bring us as simple entertainment or as another form of culture They are already reason enough to enjoy them.
