Latest Research Can Increase Short-Term Memory

Playing games can improve cognitive abilities. (photo: Alex Haney / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Taking an adult step, the ability to remember short-term memory is certainly decreasing over time. But a recent study shows the game can overcome it.

In a recent study on the effects of a game, 47 adults between the ages of 60 and 79 were involved in the study. They were divided into two groups.

One group played a musical rhythm game called Rhythmity and another group played a normal word search game, for 20 minutes a day and lasted for 8 weeks.

As a result, the difference between the two groups is clear, Rhythmic players can target visual perceptions and selective attention to short-term memory, as tested through facial recognition exercises.

"As hypothesized, only the rhythm training group exhibits a short-term memory upgrade on facial recognition tasks, so providing important evidence that musical rhythm training can be beneficial for performance on non-musical tasks," the researchers wrote in their paper published in PNAS.

Furthermore, what makes this game special is that it can adapt to the people who play it, change the level of difficulty to encourage players to improve their abilities without making them too difficult.

Launching Science Alert, Monday, October 10, the post-training analysis was carried out through electroencephalography (EEG) during an introduction task involving an unknown face.

The rhythmist is better at identifying faces after eight weeks of courses, and the EEG reading shows increased activity in the superior plenary lobulus, which is the brain region associated with short-term vision reading music and visual memory.

Rhythmicity was developed by drummer border Hart, who was once a Grateful Dead and used visual instructions to train participants to play rhythm games on tablets.

As for the tempo, complexity, and precision needed, everything is adjusted according to the progress of the players.

Cognitive control declines often come with age, but this game is proof that there is a way to maintain human mental acuity.

"All of these games have the same basic algorithm and adaptive approach, but they use very, very different types of activity. And in all, we show that you can improve cognitive abilities in this population," said neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley of UCSF.