Games - Stimulating the Minds

In the good old old days, games are just a way of getting family together to pass time. However, recent experiments had led to surprising discoveries.

In the 1960s a neuro-anatomist by the name of Maria Diamond and her fellow researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that rats playing with toys – object that can be tossed, sniffed or chewed at, learned to traverse mazes better than others that were confined to their cages.
When she checked their brains, she found out that the ones that were given toys to play with had a significantly thicker cerebral cortex – the part of brain largely responsible for thinking.

Based on this experiment, these researchers believe that people who challenges their mind will be able to build reserve brainpower that will be useful as they get older.

In another test, scientists also discovered that game playing also helps students with other kind of learning. Stuart Margulies, a New York psychologist had showed in his experiment that kids aged eight to nine who played chess for more than half an hour a day performed better than those who do not in their reading tests.

In University of Wisconsin, scientist even admit that video games could also be useful for the brain. Experiments conducted by James Gee, a professor of learning sciences believe that there are some cognitive benefits of playing games: pattern recognition, system thinking, even patience. He also concluded that gaming can exercise the mind the way physical activity exercises the body:

Although the above experiment seemed to be useful as an excuse for video gamers out there, most scientists and psychologist believe there are some problems with pc or video games. They believe these games lack nonverbal cues and digression compared to the traditional board games. The board games they believe help build healthy relationship, provide a sense of companionship as well as contributing to social intelligence.

The board games suggested for students are games that can stimulate their thinking process as well as one that involves face to face interaction with others. Games like chess, monopoly and other similar genre games are considered perfect choices. Apart from such games, scientists also believe that crossword puzzles, brain twisters or bridge tournaments can also help one toughen the brain cells.

So, what are you waiting for? Switch off your first person shooting game and start looking for your old monopoly board and start playing to get your brain into tip-top shape.

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