Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

By SharpBrains | June 30, 2022

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use :-) #1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV) “Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact…

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Trend: Esports teams harness cognitive tests to better match player to task and to identify training opportunities

By SharpBrains | June 15, 2022

I Took An Esports Brain Test. I’m Not Even Close to Being a Pro Gamer (CNET): Neu­rOlympics is a decep­tive­ly sim­ple test. The 60-minute assess­ment guides peo­ple through four uncom­pli­cat­ed video games. One involves remem­ber­ing dis­ap­pear­ing icons. Anoth­er is an exer­cise in rapid reac­tion time. A per­son­’s per­for­mance on the test is then run through an…

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Study finds that playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial for children than other forms of screentime (social media, watching videos/ TV)

By The Conversation | June 1, 2022

Many par­ents feel guilty when their chil­dren play video games for hours on end. Some even wor­ry it could make their chil­dren less clever. And, indeed, that’s a top­ic sci­en­tists have clashed over for years. In our new study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how video games affect the minds of chil­dren, inter­view­ing and test­ing more than 5,000 children…

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Helping young brains fight off anxiety by training and raising cognitive control

By Greater Good Science Center | July 23, 2021

Anx­i­ety is one of the most com­mon child­hood men­tal dis­or­ders. About 7% of chil­dren suf­fer from it at any giv­en time, with near­ly 1 in 3 ado­les­cents expe­ri­enc­ing it some­time dur­ing their teen years. For an anx­ious child, seem­ing­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties can be hard. Wor­ried kids have trou­ble adjust­ing to school, mak­ing friends, and learn­ing. They…

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Emerging applications of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS): e‑sports skills training, cognitive enhancement in older adults

By SharpBrains | April 16, 2021

10 Min­utes of Elec­tri­cal Stim­u­la­tion Dur­ing Gam­ing Helps Improve e‑Sports Skills (Tech­nol­o­gy Net­works): Researchers at Lero, the Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Ire­land Research Cen­tre for Soft­ware and Uni­ver­si­ty of Lim­er­ick (UL), have found video gamers can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve their esport skills by train­ing for just 10 min­utes a day. The research team at Lero’s Esports Sci­ence Research Lab…

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