http://argumentiru.com/hitech/games/2013/09/281587
5 сентября 2013, 11:28 [«Аргументы.ру», Андрей Гасилин ]
Итогом четырёх-летнего исследования учёных из Калифорнийского Университета стал вывод: некоторые мультизадачные видеоигры могут стимулировать мозг пожилых людей, выводя его производительность на уровень двадцатилетних.
В последнее время проводится немало исследований, касающихся воздействия видеоигр на когнитивные способности человека. Так в результате недавних экспериментов, удалось выяснить, что, вопреки традиционному мнению, молодым людям идёт на пользу увлечение компьютерными стратегиями. Теперь другое исследование (стоимостью в $300 тыс.), проведённое специалистами из Калифорнийского университета, показало, что пожилым людям тоже могут быть полезны компьютерные игры.
В течение четырёх лет контрольная группа пожилых людей (от 60 до 80 лет) систематически играла в простенький автомобильный симулятор NeuroRacer под пристальным наблюдением учёных. Сначала участникам показывали просто серию дорожных знаков, из которых им нужно было выбрать знаки определённого типа. Затем задача усложнялась: определять нужные знаки нужно было уже в процессе управления виртуальным автомобилем.
В первые дни эксперимента пожилые участники демонстрировали, в среднем, 64% снижения производительности при переходе на управление автомобилем. Для людей в возрасте около 20 лет этот показатель составлял всего 26%. Однако в результате четырёхлетней тренировки старики значительно улучшили свои когнитивные способности, причём не только в игрушке, но и в реальной жизни.
Эксперимент показал, что даже люди старше 80 лет могут улучшить коротковременную память и скорость реакции до нормального уровня, если постоянно будут их тренировать. Причём, в качестве тренажёра они могут использовать компьютерные игры.
Руководитель этого исследования доктор Газзали (Dr. Gazzaley) заметил: «Мы зафиксировали значительный прогресс участников эксперимента по разным когнитивным параметрам. Но это не значит, что любая компьютерная игра способна увеличивать производительность мозга в этом возрасте. Многие из существующих видеоигр не принесут существенного улучшения, а некоторые могут даже причинить вред».
В целом, способность некоторых компьютерных игр стимулировать работу головного мозга и замедлять его старение, не является большим открытием. К подобным выводам приходили и другие исследователи. Ценность именно этой работы заключается в том, что в ней учёные попытались понять, как именно компьютерные игры стимулируют головной мозг, и на что делать акцент при создании специальных когнитивных тренажёров.
По мнению специалистов, наука, изучающая воздействие компьютерных программ на когнитивные способности человека, находится в зачаточном состоянии. И это исследование внесло весомый вклад в её формирование.
A Multitasking Video Game Makes Old Brains Act Younger
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Dr. Adam Gazzaley, center, helped create a brain-training game described in Nature.
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: September 4, 2013
Brain scientists have discovered that swerving around cars while simultaneously picking out road signs in a video game can improve the short-term memory and long-term focus of older adults. Some people as old as 80, the researchers say, begin to show neurological patterns of people in their 20s.
Cognitive scientists say the findings, to be published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature, are a significant development in understanding how to strengthen older brains. That is because the improvements in brain performance did not come just within the game but were shown outside the game in other cognitive tasks.
Further supporting the findings, the researchers were able to measure and show changes in brain wave activity, suggesting that this research could help understand what neurological mechanisms should and could be tinkered with to improve memory and attention.
The research "shows you can take older people who aren’t functioning well and make them cognitively younger through this training,” said Earl K. Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not affiliated with the research. "It’s a very big deal.”
The study highlights an emerging field in which researchers are trying to better define and even expand the limits of attention, which is seen as crucial to performance, memory and intelligence. Previous studies, done at the University of Rochester and focused more on young people, show that heavy use of certain off-the-shelf, intense shooting games can lead to improvements in a user’s ability to ignore distractions, and even learn.
Daphne Bavelier, who led that research, cautioned that the field was young, and that brain training could have side effects, like changing how the brain functions for the worse.
"We know we can rewire the brain, but the challenge is how to do it properly,” she said. "We’re in the primitive age of brain training.”
The significance of the research seems underscored by the title on the cover of the Nature issue reporting it: "Game Changer.”
Still, this generation of research came with other strong warnings from neuroscientists, who say it in no way proved that interacting with computers provided a surefire way to get smarter. Dr. Miller said most so-called brain games did not work as advertised, and the research shows that scientists should develop the games and objectively test their effectiveness.
But he and others also said these developments might offer some antidote to a problem often made worse by technology: limited focus because of constant stimulation and multitasking.
The latest research was the product of a four-year $300,000 study done at the University of California, San Francisco. Neuroscientists there, led by Dr. Adam Gazzaley, worked with developers to create NeuroRacer, a relatively simple video game in which players drive and try to identify specific road signs that pop up on the screen, while ignoring other signs deemed irrelevant.
One of the main early findings of the study reinforced just how challenging it is to multitask successfully, particularly as people age. People in their 20s experienced a 26 percent drop in performance when they were asked to try to drive and identify signs at the same time (rather than just identify the signs without driving). For people in their 60s to 80s, the performance drop was 64 percent.
But after the older adults trained at the game, they became more proficient than untrained people in their 20s. The performance levels were sustained for six months, even without additional training. Also, the older adults performed better at memory and attention tests outside the game.
"That is the most grabbing thing here,” Dr. Gazzaley said. "We transferred the benefit from inside the game to different cognitive abilities.”
Still, Dr. Gazzaley said the findings should not be taken to suggest that any activity or video game would improve cognition or lead to brain changes.
"There’s a big leap between what we did here and the real world,” he said. If someone tries to multitask in everyday life, his performance could remain steady or be harmed by the divided attention. The tools people use, he said, must have scientific rigor behind them in the same way that training of great athletes requires a regimen.
The researchers created a second layer of proof by monitoring the brain waves of participants using electroencephalography. What they found was that in older participants, in their 60s to 80s, there were increases in a brain wave called theta, a low-level frequency associated with attention. When older subjects trained on the game, they showed increased bursts of theta, the very types of bursts seen regularly in people in their 20s.
"We made the activity in older adults’ prefrontal cortex look like the activity in younger adults’ prefrontal cortex,” said Dr. Gazzaley, referring to a part of the brain heavily involved with attention.
David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and an expert in attention and aging, said the use of brain measurement tools offered important evidence that something was changing inside the brain.
"The public and even hard-nosed scientists have this tendency to accept conclusions through the mechanism of ‘seeing is believing,' ” Dr. Meyer said. "This provides some ‘seeing.’ ”
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