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Video games can help dyslexic people read. In this article it is said that video games increases people's attention span allowing them to read faster and more accurately. Video games can help eyesight. IN this article it is stated that Call Of Duty can help your eyesight.

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Your mother was wrong. Video games aren't bad for you. They're actually making your life better.

Despite hand-wringing over a supposed connection between violence and video games ( hint: there isn't any), numerous academic studies indicate that playing video games has many psychological and even physical benefits.

Taken together, it turns out video games actually make you a better human being.

To better understand how video games affect the brain, German researchers conducted a study, which was released this week. They asked 23 adults with a median age of 25 to play "Super Mario 64" for 30 minutes a day over a period of two months. A separate control group did not play video games at all.

Examining the brains of the two groups using an MRI machine, they found that the gaming group had a rise in gray matter in the right hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum -- areas of the brain responsible for spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning and fine motor skills in the hands.

"While previous studies have shown differences in brain structure of video gamers, the present study can demonstrate the direct causal link between video gaming and a volumetric brain increase," study leader Simone Kühn said. "This proves that specific brain regions can be trained by means of video games."

Kühn and her colleagues concluded that video games could potentially be used as a therapy for patients with mental disorders that cause brain regions to shrink or be altered. Such diseases include schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer's.

In August, British researchers found that certain video games, particularly strategic games such as "Starcraft," can increase a player's "brain flexibility," which the scientists described as "a cornerstone of human intelligence."

The study, conducted at Queen Mary University of London and University College London, is based on psychological tests conducted before and after 72 volunteers played "Starcraft" or the life-simulation game "The Sims" for 40 hours over six to eight weeks. They found that participants assigned to play "Starcraft" experienced gains in their performance on psychological tests, completing cognitive flexibility tasks with greater speed and accuracy.

"We need to understand now what exactly about these games is leading to these changes, and whether these cognitive boosts are permanent or if they dwindle over time," study researcher Brian Glass said in August. "Once we have that understanding, it could become possible to develop clinical interventions for symptoms related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or traumatic brain injuries, for example."

Playing brain-teasing game for just two hours a week may help slow the degree of mental decay associated with the natural aging process, according to a study this year from the University of Iowa.

A study of 681 healthy individuals ages 50 and older revealed that playing 10 hours of a specially designed video game was able to stall the natural decline of different cognitive skills by up to seven years, in some cases.

Over five to eight weeks, one group of seniors was given computerized crossword puzzles while three other groups played a computer game called "Road Tour." The game involves matching pictures of vehicles while remembering the location of a particular road sign as more and more "distractors" appear as the player advanced. The experience is meant to mirror the difficulty older drivers have when they have to process information from multiple points of view at an intersection.

"Whether it's a specially manufactured game or something like 'World of Warcraft,' games are cognitively complex and require mental energy and abilities to play them," said Jason Allaire, an associate professor in the department of psychology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was not involved with the study. "Whenever you do anything that requires mental energy, you're exercising your abilities -- it's just like if you exercise your muscles, you get stronger."

A study from the University of Padua throws cold water on the idea that video games are bad for the brains of young children. In February, the Italian researchers presented evidence that playing fast-paced video games can improve the reading skills of children with dyslexia.

The team separated children age 7 to 13 into two groups, one of which played an action game called "Rayman Raving Rabids" while the other played a lower tempo game. When the reading skills of the children were tested afterwards, those who played the action game were capable of reading faster and more accurately. The authors of the study hypothesized that the action games helps kids increase their attention spans, a skill considered crucial to reading.

In November 2012, scientists at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston conducted an experiment in which high school gamers, college gamers and medical residents competed to see who could perform better virtual surgery. The players completed a series of tasks on a device that replicated real surgeries and measured skills in 32 different categories, such as hand-eye coordination, pressure on the controls and timing.

The high school sophomores, who played video games two hours a day, dramatically outperformed both the college gamers (who played four hours of video games daily) and the medical residents (who had only sporadic gaming experience). Trying to be a real surgeon must have gotten in the way.

Still, Sami Kilic, a University of Texas professor who helped design the experiment, reasonably insisted that students interested in a career in medicine should still focus on academics, not virtual surgery. However, a separate study found that surgeons who played video games for at least 3 hours a week saw 37 percent fewer mistakes during laparoscopic surgery.

In 2010, researchers presented evidence at the American Pain Society's annual scientific meeting that video games, specifically ones with an emphasis on virtual reality, have proven effective in reducing anxiety or pain caused by medical procedures or chronic illness. The study found that when people undergoing chemotherapy or other serious treatments were immersed in a virtual gaming world, they reported significantly less stress and fear. In addition, those being treated for burn wounds found a decline in their pain ratings by rates of 30 to 50 percent.

Referencing the motion sensor technology of the Xbox Kinect or the Wii, Charles Friedman of the Pain Relief Centers said that gaming allows the brain to stay busy using other senses instead of focusing on pain. Gaming also releases endorphins in the brain, a chemical that is generally associated with happiness and capable of numbing discomfort.

According to a University of Rochester study, shooting bad guys in video games can unexpectedly give you better vision.

In the 2009 study, expert action gamers played first-person shooting games like "Unreal Tournament 2004" and "Call of Duty" while non-experienced action gamers played "The Sims 2." Those playing the shoot-'em-up games saw a boost in their "contrast sensitivity function," or the ability to discern subtle changes in the brightness of an image. Considered one of first of the visual aptitudes to diminish over time, the ability to pick out bright patches is key to tasks like driving at night.

The study's authors believe that the process of locating and aiming at enemies exercised gamers' eyes. And with bad guys unpredictably popping up, the shooting games also helped players learn to analyze optical data on the fly. The researchers believe their study shows the potential of video games -- particularly action games -- to serve as an aid in the way we correct bad eyesight.

While video games are often blamed as a cause of mental illness, studies have shown that they can also be a cure.

In 2012, researchers in New Zealand created a novel way to treat depressed teenagers with "SPARX," a video game designed to give therapy to kids in a way that was more fun and active than traditional counseling. The acronym stands for "smart, positive, active, realistic and x-factor thoughts," strategies that have been commonly used to battle depression.

The study included 168 teens with an average age of 15 that had previously sought help or struggled with depression. Half of the group was randomly assigned to "treatment as usual," which was usually one-on-one counseling over five sessions. The other half played SPARX, a fantasy game where the subjects created avatars in order to squash "gloomy negative automatic thoughts," and restore order in the virtual world. Each level taught players basic facts about depression, strategies for dealing with intense negative emotions and relaxation techniques.

The results for the SPARX group were extremely encouraging. About 44 percent of SPARX players recovered completely from depression while only 26 percent of the control group were no longer depressed.

For stroke victims, recovery can be a long or even impossible process. Seeking a more affordable and effective approach to restoring speech and movement after a stroke, Debbie Rand of Tel Aviv University turned to video games.

Individuals who had a stroke one to seven years before the study were assigned to one of two groups. The first did traditional rehabilitation exercises while the other played video games on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii.

For an occupational therapist like Rand, the advantages of using video games for rehabilitation were clear in several ways. While both groups showed improvement in things like grip, only the video game group continued to show improvement in hand strength after the treatment. The video gamers not only performed double the number of arm movements during each session, their movements were "goal-directed" and not merely repetitive exercises.

"When individuals plan their movements and move deliberately in order to accomplish a specific goal, it is likely to have a positive impact on brain plasticity," Rand said, noting that because video games are fun and enjoyable, subjects are more likely to commit fully to the rehab.

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9 Ways Video Games Can Actually Be Good For You

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Your mother was wrong. Video games aren't bad for you. They're actually making your life better. Despite hand-wringing over a supposed connection between violence and video games ( hint: there isn't any), numerous academic studies indicate that playing video games has many psychological and even physical benefits.

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Video games are not bad for you that is what they said about rock music.

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"Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto quotes from BrainyQuote.com

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What NFL players get their moves. Video games,

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EA SPORTS FIFA GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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The Official GIPHY Channel for EA SPORTS FIFA

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People using game moves in real life.

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People using dance moves from a game in real life.

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Video games are helping the economy. As stated in the article an average person would spend up to $36 billion on video games in their lifetime. Game designers can make up to $140,000 a month.

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In this article it is stated that 63% of 11 to 12 year olds dream about being a sports star. Video games can help them achieve this. It is also stated that some basketball coaches have been using NBA 2k18 to teach their players to do drills. So video games are helping coaches and little kids train their players and be what they are straining to be.

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Video games can help with pain. In this article it is stated that video games are a pain reliever to minor pain. Video games can slow aging. In this article it is said that video games can help with aging by slowing it down.

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In the article states that Video games can help people be more antisocial. Video games can also strengthen your ability to learn. video games can improve your focus and attention. Also video games can help treat people with depression.

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The Ultimate Resource for Video Game Design

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The debate as to whether video games are good or bad for us has been going since the days of Pong and Space Invaders.

Unfortunately most people have always assumed they were the cause of many mental and physical problems. Even if there was a lack of scientific evidence to prove it.

Some say it is in our human nature to find something to blame when there's an issue, and video games have always been an easy target.

But things have changed and now more professional studies are being conducted to find out the truth.
Are video games good for you?
Or, do video games really hinder our ability to learn, make us more violent, or affect our physical health?

While there still isn't enough evidence to offer a solid answer, the good news is that most researchers are discovering that games can be good for us.

This article will show you 10 reasons why video games are good for you.

Before you read on, remember that anything in excess can be harmful.

No benefit that comes from a video game will justify playing them for 10 hours a day.

It's your responsibility to figure out how long you should play before putting the controller down and doing something else, as difficult as it may be.

10 Ways Video Games Are Good for You

1. Video Games May Slow Down Aging

Male, female, young adult, middle-aged person- all have one thing in common and that's aging.

And while getting older and wiser has its perks, there are also a number of natural problems that come about as well.

There's a reason why you see senior citizens driving at 25 MPH even though the speed limit is 45.

But just like maintaining a healthy exercise routine can help your body feel 50 when you're 60, our brain can also be kept 'in shape'.

In fact, a study conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa showed that playing games can do just that.

The study had 681 healthy people aged 50 and older play 10 hours of a certain video game for five to eight weeks, and this is what they found:

"We've shown that 10 hours is enough to slow the decline by several years. We saw a range across all our tests from a minimum of a year-and-a-half all the way up to about six-and-a-half years of recovery or improvement. From just 10 to 14 hours of training, that's quite a lot of improvement".

It seems performing any task that requires exercising your mind will help it stay sharper, and that includes video games. ()

2. Better Decision Maker

C. Shawn Green from the University of Rochester wanted to see how games affect our ability to make decisions.

His goal was to test if games, which demand us to view and keep track of moving peripheral images, improve our ability to receive sensory data and thus help us make more precise decisions.

The study had a group of young adults with no gaming experience play an action game for 50 hours.

A second group of the same age played a slow-paced strategy game instead.
After the study, Green had nothing but good things to say:

"Action video games are fast-paced, and there are peripheral images and events popping up, and disappearing. These video games are teaching people to become better at taking sensory data in, and translating it into correct decisions."

A colleague of his even went on to say that shooters can change the brain by dramatically enhancing many of our low level perceptual functions. Definitely good news for all the Halo and Call of Duty fans out there. ()

3. Games Can Help (Not Hurt!) Your Eyesight

There are few gamer kids who grew up without ever hearing their parents say "you're going to go blind watching that screen all day".

For a while it did seem like they had a point since we tend to blink much less frequently while playing a game.

This can cause serious problems like eyestrain and dry eye syndrome.

Another team of researchers from the University of Rochester sought to prove if games really worsen our vision.

The 2009 study involved having a group of experienced first-person shooter gamers play Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament 2004 while more casual gamers played slow games like The Sims 2.

After testing, those who played the first-person shooters showed signs of having better vision that the others.

Daphne Bavelier, the leader of the study, discovered that playing action games improves an ability called contrast sensitivity function.

This ability helps us discern between changes in shades of gray against a colored backdrop, which is very beneficial while driving at night. ()

4. Video Games Can Make You Less Anti-Social

One of the worst stereotypes associated with playing video games is that those who do are awkward social rejects.

Even if there plenty of basement-dwelling gamers out there, that doesn't mean all gamers have problems socializing in public and making friends.

Researchers from three different institutions in the UK and Canada recently did their own studies to find out how common antisocial behavior is among gamers.

What each one discovered is that gamers who partake in live social environments are actually the most communicative and friendly people there.

"Gamers aren't the antisocial basement-dwellers we see in pop culture stereotypes; they're highly social people," said one of the researchers who went to more than 20 events where gamers get together.

While observing gamers he even went on to admit that they formed stronger relationships than non-gamers due to their matching love of games. (

5. Games Can Enhance Your Ability To Learn

Contrary to popular belief that video games make you bad at school, researchers from the UK found that certain video games can actually enhance our brain flexibility.

The study was done at both the University College London and Queen Mary University of London and had 72 volunteers play two different games for 40 hours over six to eight weeks.

The games were Starcraft, a fast real-time strategy game, and The Sims, a slower life-simulation game.

Here's what they had to say:

"This result supports the notion that the within-StarCraft gaming manipulation led participants to manage more information sources during game play, thus leading to enhancements in cognitive flexibility."

In other words, the people who played Starcraft boasted better cognitive flexibility since the game requires constant thinking and player input.

So while slower games may not offer the same benefit, it's cool to know that our favorite fast-paced games are helping us become better learners while entertaining us. (

6. Help Improve Hand-Eye Coordination

There are many professions that require having better hand-eye coordination than the average person.

Of course, surgeons depend on theirs to not only perform a successful operation but also make sure they don't nick an artery or vital organ.

That's why a lot of aspiring surgeons are now required to perform virtual surgeries for training.

Curious to see who could perform better at these virtual surgeries, Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch brought together a group of high school kids, college students, and medical residents.

After testing the three groups to see who could outperform the others, the scientists were surprised to discover that the high school students did the best.

Why?

Simply put, the high school kids played video games at least two hours a day while the medical residents rarely had time to play.

While one of the researchers insist that the residents would still do better in an actual surgery, the study is one of many proving that our favorite games can help improve our hand-eye coordination. ( Source)

7. Improved Focus and Attention

One of the biggest worries among parents today is that their children sit in class thinking about Minecraft and Pokemon instead of listening to the teacher.

To see if games instead helped kids pay more attention by improving cognition and perception, a researcher named Vikranth Bejjanki performed a few experiments alongside several colleagues.

These tests first involved having two groups, experienced and inexperienced gamers, perform several perceptual tasks such as pattern discrimination.

The gamers ended up outperforming the other group who rarely, if ever, played games before the experiment.

The paper concludes with the following:

"The enhanced learning of the regularity and structure of environments may act as a core mechanism by which action video game play influences performance in perception, attention, and cognition."

In other words, playing games improves several abilities, including paying attention. ()

8. Video Games May Help Treat Depression

A few years ago researchers in New Zealand sought to find out if video games can be used to treat mental disorders like depression.

This was done with SPARX, a game specifically designed to provide therapy to teenagers in a way that's more active and enjoyable than regular counseling.

Over 168 teens with an average age of 15 participated, with all of them having shown previous signs of depression.

While half of the group received traditional counseling, the other group got to play SPARX.

The game involves creating avatars to rid the virtual world of enemies representing gloomy, negative thoughts.

Every stage also introduced general facts about depression, including ways to relax and deal with negative emotions.

Here's their conclusion after discovering that SPARX players did better at recovering from depression than the other group:

"SPARX is a potential alternative to usual care for adolescents presenting with depressive symptoms in primary care settings and could be used to address some of the unmet demand for treatment."

9. Video Games Can Help You Stay Stay Fit

Of all the benefits from video games on this list, this is the one that most people already know.

This is likely attributed to Nintendo's Wii system that introduced motion control gaming to players all over the world.

Active games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit are to this day found in hospitals and retirement homes.

Researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center recently performed test to see how much better active games are for kids compared to activities like watching TV and browsing the internet.

Tests involved measuring the heart rate, self-reported exertion, and energy expenditure of kids aged 10 to 13 while they performed three specific activities:

playing active video games

watching television

walking on a treadmill

The team discovered that playing motion-control games was was just as beneficial as walking on a treadmill at a speed of 3.5mph.

Both exercises had the kids burning the same amount of calories, which was nearly three times more than the children just watching Netflix. ()

10. Video Games Can Help Couples

While there are plenty of ways for couples to have fun together and relax, psychologists from the University of Denver wanted to find out if playing video games was one of them.

This is an interesting study because research shows men care more about this part of a relationship than women do.

At the same time, most guys are known to either play games alone or with other male friends- not so much their girlfriend, wife, etc.

The study, which actually started in 1996, had 200 couples in their second year of marriage decide what aspect of their relationship was most important.

Their answers demonstrated a strong correlation between the importance of partaking in fun, exciting activities together and a good relationship.

Howard Markman, one of the psychologists involved in the study said this:

"The more you invest in fun and friendship and being there for your partner, the happier the relationship will get over time."

So even though the experiment didn't involve video games, it serves to prove that couples who game together tend to have happier, healthier relationships. ()

Conclusion

Just like video games themselves, the field of studying how games help or hurt us is still very new.

There is still plenty of research to be done before we find out how the virtual characters, stories, and worlds we love really affect on a physical and mental level.

Even so, feel free to show your friends and family this list if they're the kind of people who still assume games are to blame for obesity, school shootings, and antisocial behavior.

It will help them realize that instead of giving us problems, games may have actually been improving our lives in some ways.

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10 Reasons Why Video Games are Good for You, Sometimes

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The debate as to whether video games are good or bad for us has been going since the days of Pong and Space Invaders. Unfortunately most people have always assumed they were the cause of many mental and physical problems. Even if there was a lack of scientific evidence to prove it.

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In this article it is stated that if you play video games a lot you may have a mental disorder. the article also states that gambling disorder is close to the same as gaming disorder. This article also states that video games can improve ADHD but it does not cure everything.

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Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash

Video games can be a huge time suck-it's easy to get caught up in a gaming session and suddenly realize six hours have gone by. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that-as long as you balance it with something healthier, like a long hike or, you know, maybe drinking a glass of water.

But as part of its International Classification of Diseases, the World Health Organization is addressing what it sees as a more serious problem: " gaming disorder." Basically, it's codifying the common sense idea that if video games are taking over your life, you may have a mental health issue.

According to the draft guidelines, first noticed by Forbes, gaming disorder isn't simply the occasional Call of Duty marathon. It's a "pattern of gaming behavior" that results in "significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." That's actually pretty straightforward: If a devotion to gaming is torpedoing your human relationships, your career, or your schooling, it may be time to reevaluate why.

"Gaming," in this case, can mean any kind of video game, online or not, and the unhealthy symptoms of gaming disorder should sound familiar to anyone who's read about addiction. (In fact, "gaming disorder" is categorized under "disorders due to addictive behaviors," right next to "gambling disorder.") There's the "impaired control" over gaming time: when it happens, how often you play, for how long, whether you can stop, and so on. There's prioritizing gaming to the exclusion of other activities and, well, normal human functioning. And there's the refusal (or inability) to curtail gaming even as it leads to negative consequences.

The WHO is describing something more serious than the stereotype of waking up covered in Dorito crumbs and realizing you've burned a whole weekend in the world of Grand Theft Auto. "Gaming disorder" is still a beta draft guideline; it's not final. But a key part of the concept is the pattern of behavior, and right now the WHO believes the pattern should be present for at least 12 months to offer a diagnosis. That time, though, may be shortened if symptoms are severe. There's also another beta category, " hazardous gaming," for gaming that "that appreciably increases the risk of harmful physical or mental health consequences" for the gamer or others.

It'd be hard to argue that video games can't be addictive-they're designed to keep us playing, after all, and there are plenty of examples of people taking that too far. At the same time, we've also seen that games may be able to improve attention spans for people with ADHD, though they're not going to be a cure-all for mental health. The WHO guidelines seem like an attempt by the medical community to reiterate what we already know: Video games can be fun and even improve your life. Just don't let them take it over.

Read This Next: Your Bad Gaming Posture Is Starting to Show

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Playing Video Games Too Much Might Be Bad for Your Mental Health

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Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash Video games can be a huge time suck-it's easy to get caught up in a gaming session and suddenly realize six hours have gone by. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that-as long as you balance it with something healthier, like a long hike or, you know, maybe drinking a glass of water.