That Video Game May Be Good Medicine
No matter where you grew up, you played games as a child. Some of us played jacks, freeze tag, and Uno. Others, like my children, play Apples to Apples, Ga-Ga, and a video game called, “Subway Surf.”
Like many parents, I much prefer to see my kids play outdoor games that give them physical exercise, rather than games on an iPad that exercise only their index fingers. But some emerging research caused me to rethink the extent to which that preference is black and white.
This research comes years after the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) invested in an effort we called Health Games Research to explore how video games could improve health.
One of the projects we funded under this initiative was Adam Gazzaley’s, founding director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
As he tells the story, his RWJF-funded work evolved into the work he is known for today — which explores ways to increase the brain’s cognitive power through video games. To put it simply, Adam is researching if and how games strengthen the brain and how this insight can help the industry make video games that promote health for people of all ages.
“I’ve become frustrated with a lot of our current approaches to enhancing cognitive abilities — both in those who have deficits in those abilities…as well as in people who are healthy and even developing young minds,” says Gazzaley.
So what led Adam to believe that video games held promise to enhance young minds at a time when many were worried they were rotting them?
- Video games make your brain work hard. Regardless of the medium, certain types of games appear to exercise parts of your brain which may not otherwise be used during your daily routine. According to Adam, the right video game could be giving your brain just the workout it needs to stay healthy.
- Video games create immersive experiences. It stands to reason that since the stories told through video games access many parts of your brain, they also have the potential to alter it.
- Video games are fun. Let’s be honest: who doesn’t love a good game, especially if it’ll keep your brain healthy?
“We need to think more broadly about video games and realize that they create experiences that are the gateway to the plasticity in our brain. It’s how our brain changes,” says Gazzaley. “It’s how we learn.”
Tune in to our Pioneering Ideas podcast and listen as Adam explains how he believes customized games can contribute to new breakthroughs in neuroscience that fundamentally change the ways in which we can harness the power of the brain to improve health and well-being.
At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we actively explore emerging trends to learn how they might be applied to improve health and health care, and build a Culture of Health.
You can hear other visionary thinkers across different fields who are working with us to build a Culture of Health by listening to other episodes of our Pioneering Ideas podcast.
If you have a pioneering idea, we’d love to hear about it.
