Brain and Body Study: eSports boost cognition more than sports

Playing video games may boost your cognitive abilities more than doing exercise, while exercise can help improve your mental health, but not the other way around.

These insights into how to protect against age-related decline have come from the Brain and Body Study, a collaboration between Professor Adrian Owen’s team at Western University, Canada, and the Science and Industry Museum for this week’s Manchester Science Festival.

‘I was surprised that video games improved cognition, whereas regular exercise did not, in part because we have shown conclusively in the past that computerised “brain training” games do not improve cognitive function,’ comments Professor Owen, who reports the study with his Western colleagues, Conor Wild, Sydni Paleczny and Alex Xue, and me, in a preprint on PsyArXiv.

‘However, the sorts of games that frequent gamers play nowadays are really quite different from consumer brain training games,’ he explains. ‘Typically, they are highly engaging, strategic, and may enhance visual attention and processing speed, and problem-solving abilities, through intense repetition and practice.

‘Any gamer also knows that these games are designed to activate the reward systems of the brain, which leads to the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine. This may also have long term effects on cognitive function’.

Even though scientists have spent years studying the relationship between lifestyle and cognition, from exercise to video games, questions remain over what impact the brain has on the body, and vice versa.

The World Health Organisation has stated exercise benefits cognition, for example, but the studies on which this conclusion is based are often small, poorly defined, and inconsistent.

In January, we launched the online Brain and Body experiment to provide new insights, which is still active. Over 2,500 participants from around the world initially registered for the study, which asked them to complete a lifestyle survey and then carry out a battery of online brain games.

The games were developed over the past decade by Professor Owen and his team—now commercialized by the company Creyos—that are both fun and can accurately measure distinct aspects of cognition, such as memory, attention, reasoning and verbal abilities.

Once a significant number of people finished all the tasks the effects of lifestyle activities on aspects of brain health could be weighed up. By the time the first analysis was completed, roughly 1,000 people had completed the tasks, which makes the study large compared with many traditional laboratory-based studies.

The analysis shows that cognitive benefits of playing video games as tantamount to being younger, according to Professor Owen: ‘People who frequently play video games—that is, five or more hours per week for a single type of game—performed cognitively, on average, like people who were 13.7 years younger,’ he says, while ‘Individuals who engaged infrequently with video games played—less than 5 hours per week across all kinds of games—performed like people 5.2 years younger’.

‘It is important to emphasise that although regular exercise did not improve cognitive functioning it did seem to affect mental health, leading to lower reported levels of depression and anxiety,’ adds Professor Owen. ‘We know that physical activity stimulates the release of endorphins in the body, which are thought to produce feelings of euphoria, often referred to as the “runner’s high”‘.

Physical activity also improves cerebrovascular health, which increases blood flow to the brain, enhancing oxygenation and the delivery of nutrients. ‘This improved vascular function may help protect against challenges with mental health symptoms.’

When it came to quantifying the impact on mental health on those people who met or exceeded the WHO’s recommendation for physical activity of 150 minutes per week, ‘they were 12% more likely to report having no symptoms of depression, and 9% more likely to have no symptoms of anxiety, adds coauthor Dr Wild, who jointly led the study. ‘In other words, participants who did not meet the WHO guidelines were 12% more likely to report having some symptoms of depression, and 9% more likely to report symptoms of anxiety.’

The data also suggest that physical activity made the greatest difference at the lower end of both scales, where symptoms were either mild or absent, said Dr Wild.

Completing the survey gave the Western University team a deeper understanding of how lifestyle affects the long-term brain health, ‘and could in future help us choose activities that promote healthy cognitive aging,’ says Professor Owen. ‘Exercise and video gaming have differential effects on the brain, which may help individuals tailor their lifestyle choices to promote mental and cognitive health.’

Details of the findings will be presented by Professor Owen himself in the museum this Saturday 19 October as part of the Manchester Science Festival, running from 18–27 October at the Science and Industry Museum, where he will also talk about the neuroscience of Hollywood movies with the double Oscar winner Paul Franklin.

Visitors to the festival will also be able to take part in a pilot study to follow up these results. ‘One important caveat about our study is that we did not look at the immediate effects of exercise,’ comments Professor Owen. ‘That is, we focused on whether taking regular exercise is beneficial for cognitive and mental health, rather than whether there are any immediate benefits following a bout of intense exercise.’

Professor Owen and his colleagues Fay Harrison, Lucinda Slingsby, Sid Rankaduwa, Emily Moore and Sydni Paleczny will address this by inviting festivalgoers to assess themselves on cognitive tasks, then do vigorous exercise (or play a video game) before testing themselves again. ‘Hopefully, we will be able to get some insights into whether going for a run can actually improve your cognitive function, albeit for just a short period of time,’ says Professor Owen.

Professor Owen also provides a commentary about how the brain handles sound and light within an artistic festival commission by the Squidsoup collective. Inspired by the work of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, State of Mind is an arrangement of LED lights within soundscape that is currently on display at the Science and Industry Museum.

‘The Squidsoup installation is fascinating from a neuroscientific point of view,’ says Professor Owen. ‘Among other things, it explores the importance of rhythms like sleep cycles, emotional changes, or daily routines for our biological well-being.

‘For example, when our internal patterns are misaligned with the natural or societal rhythms around us, it can lead to feelings of stress, fatigue, and confusion, as our bodies and minds struggle to adapt. Whether it is due to irregular work hours, excessive screen time, or the fast pace of modern life, being out of sync can disrupt our overall well-being, making it harder to connect with the world and with others in a meaningful and harmonious way.’

‘As one of the UK’s most popular science festivals, we hope to engage audiences of all ages with science, not least with the help this year of our brilliant guest curators Libby Jackson and Anne-Marie Imafidon,’ comments the Director of the Science and Industry Museum, Sally MacDonald. ‘Thanks to Professor Owen’s talented team at Western, we have been able to push back the frontiers of neuroscience too.’