The Perfect Video Game Partner

Your children may have new partners when they play video games: their grandparents.

Controlling a video game’s action with fingers on the keys is not only fun for seniors, it may also delay cognitive loss, according to a study from the University of Iowa.

As you age, your mind loses “executive function,” which helps with memory, attention, perception and problem solving. Playing just 10 hours of a game improved seniors’ mental processing and delayed declines by as many as seven years for a range of cognitive skills, according to the research, published in the journal PLOS One.

In an experiment in which one group of seniors played a video game called “Road Tour” and another worked computerized crossword puzzles, the video group scored far better on concentration, nimbleness in shifting from one mental task to another and the speed at which new information was processed.