A survey recently carried out by a research team from King’s College in London has shown that people over the age of 50 could benefit from playing online games to train their brain.
The study group of almost 7,000 people was brought together by the BBC, the Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Council. They were studied for a total of 6 months, with tests carried out on their cognitive skills at the start, after 3 months and right at the end of the period.
Playing Games for 10 Minutes at a Time
One group of participants was asked to play brain training games on the internet for 10 minutes at a time, while a control group was simply asked to carry out basic internet searches to give a comparison. The group that played the games could play as many times as they wanted to.
The results gained from this study suggest that the group of people who played the games lost less of their cognitive skills and problem solving abilities over the 6 months of the research. Those who are over 60 also reported that the benefits spilled over to their normal chores such as shopping and cooking as well.
Playing at least 5 times a week appears to be necessary to get the benefits of these games. Previous research has shown that people under 50 don’t necessarily get any benefits from this type of brain game.
The interesting results of this research have led to longer and more comprehensive studies on the subject being commissioned.
