Maybe those video games won’t rot your brain

Wouldn’t it be awesome if playing video games ended up being actually healthy for you? Well, you’re in luck. A recent New York Times story reported on a new study indicating that playing simple video games apparently make your brain younger.

Benefits

According to the story, a simple video game requiring players to swerve around cars and pick out road signs can improve the short-term memory and long-term focus of older adults. Astonishingly, the story says, some players as old as 80 began showing similar neurological patters of people in their 20s.

Carry over

Researchers found, too, that these features continued after older adults shut off the video games. This means that older adults again exhibited the neurological patterns of much younger adults when performing their everyday tasks.

Crack out those old games!

So, it might be time for our older readers to break out their long-abandoned copies of Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Anything that helps build a younger brain needs to be embraced. If it requires a few hours of shooting down aliens or gobbling dots to get it done? That's even better.