Matthew Jenkin 

Rise of the silver gamers: you don’t have to be young to play video games

Older people say that game-playing on Kindles, iPads and Wii's is having a positive impact on their mental wellbeing, reports Matthew Jenkin
  
  

silver gamers
It's not just children who play video games. Photograph: Isopix/Rex Photograph: Isopix/REX

Octogenarian Doris Oram's evening routine is unlikely to raise many eyebrows. She knits, watches television, and chats with friends in the care home where she is recovering from surgery. But unlike many of her peers, the 84-year-old's favourite bedtime ritual is not a cup of cocoa and a romantic novel – it's playing video games on her Kindle Fire.

Oram, who lives in Bucklesham Grange in Ipswich, has downloaded more than 20 games to the e-reader her daughter bought her as a present and admits she's addicted to the mental challenge of playing puzzles on a computer.

"It keeps me very active and alert," she explains. "It's a great activity in the evening when you might not have much to do. I find if I have a few minutes to spare and am feeling a bit bored it can help my mind stay sharp. At night I like to just pick it up and have a go.

"I don't have dementia but have found it really helps with coordination because you have got to use your eyes and fingers to play."

The fun factor of playing video games should not be underestimated. For the residents of The Paddock retirement home in north London, competing against each other at golf or bowling on the Wii every Friday is as much a mental exercise as it is a social event.

John Clark has lived at the home for 19 years now. The 85-year-old has no children and since his wife died eight years ago he has been left alone, with no relatives to visit him. Playing video games has therefore given him the opportunity to meet other residents for an all important chat and gossip.

"It's the game itself I enjoy but also the company," he reveals. "If we weren't playing games, some of us would be sitting in our flats all alone."

Clark adds that three of the women he competes against have found freedom from their disabilities by playing the Wii, relishing scoring a hole in one without having to risk injury by getting up from their seats.

Davina Ludlow, director of carehome.co.uk, notes that there has also been an increase in care homes using tablets as reminiscence tools, as well as keeping in touch with family and friends via Skype, email and social media.

There is reason to believe the positive impact older people feel games and new technology are having on their cognitive abilities and mental wellbeing is more than anecdotal. Scientists now argue that scoring a hole in one or fighting a zombie horde on the latest console may do more than give the player an addictive rush of endorphins.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found that 60-year-olds who played a custom-designed video game for 12 hours over the course of a month improved their multitasking abilities to levels better than those achieved by 20-year-olds playing the game for the first time. The subjects retained those improvements six months later.

Using a specially designed car game called NeuroRacer, the team of researchers suggested the ageing brain is more "plastic" than previously thought, meaning it retains a greater ability to reshape itself in response to the environment and could therefore be improved with properly designed games.

But is there any evidence to suggest mainstream games already available on the market can boost older people's brain power in the same way? Peter Etchells, a psychologist at Bath Spa University who studies the effects of computer games on the brain, claims action video games can benefit people who play them intensively. Regular practice can lead to faster reaction times and the ability to search and identify objects on a screen.

Etchells, however, warns against jumping to conclusions. It is very difficult to prove, he says, that improvements seen in regular gamers are down to the actual activity of playing. It may simply be the case that the subject is genetically less likely to experience cognitive decline.

"You could study a bunch of over 60s who play Grand Theft Auto – but you can't then say for sure that their mental alertness is because they play video games," he adds. "There might be other factors involved."

Professor Adam Gazzaley, who led the ground-breaking NeuroRacer study in California, agrees that caution is needed when recommending the use of games to improve older people's mental agility.

The field, he explains, is still in its infancy and while there are lots of reasons for optimism, the neuroscientist advocates a healthy level of conservatism when playing games that have yet to be scientifically validated. That said, he adds, if it is not causing harm and the games are actually enjoyable then there is little reason to discourage people.

"I don't look at these games as if they were the holy grail. That gaming will be a panacea for everything that ails us," Gazzaley explains. "Games are just one piece that will work with other things such as physical exercise and nutrition. What we will really get the data for in the next few years is how these different elements interact. Only then will we start to understand what the ingredients are to the recipe for having a healthy brain."

 

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