Gaming can help treat brain injury
First person shooting games were found to help people recover from traumatic brain injuries.
Traumatic brain injury can leave patients with brain damage unable to carry out basic day to day tasks or return to work, because they have problems processing basic information.
Researchers from Macquarie University, Australia found that participants not only got better at gaming, but were able to carry out some everyday tasks faster and more successfully than those who didn’t play video games.
“This type of injury can have lifelong implications,” said lead author Clinical Neuropsychologist Dr Alexandra Vakili, “rehabilitation is a long process, but without intervention the patient may never return to work. The economic benefits of retraining cognitive functioning benefits both the individual and the community at large.”
The study used an action video game and a commercially available video game console as a cognitive rehabilitation tool for Traumatic Brain Injury, building on previous research that demonstrates action video game players make faster and more accurate judgments.
Given that the typical demographic of Traumatic Brain Injury survivors is young men, a computer-assisted intervention has immediate appeal, and reduces the need for specialized equipment.
“What we need now,” said Dr Alexandra Vakili, “are larger randomised controlled trials in this area, to build on the positive results reported by the participants. The potential that action gaming has to help this set of patients is really exciting.”
