A recent study has found that playing video games can significantly improve cognitive function and mental health in patients with schizophrenia. The research, published in Translational Psychiatry, revealed that video game training enhances attention and brain connectivity, offering a promising new approach to treating this complex mental disorder.
Previous research has shown that playing certain types of video games can improve cognitive performance and brain structure in healthy individuals. These benefits are thought to arise from the continuous and goal-oriented interaction with the game, which activates the brain’s reward system and enhances neuronal plasticity (i.e., enhancing how the brain can reorganize itself by forming new connections between neurons, which are the brain cells).
Given that patients with schizophrenia often experience cognitive deficits and reduced brain plasticity, the researchers wanted to explore whether these benefits could extend to this population.
The study team, led by Maxi Becker from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, recruited 95 patients with schizophrenia and 82 healthy controls.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: 3D video game training (Super Mario 64), 2D video game training (New Super Mario Bros.), or E-book reading (active control, where participants were provided a selection of 13 books to choose from). They engaged in their assigned activity for 30 minutes daily over an eight-week period.
Cognitive and clinical assessments were conducted before and after the intervention, and functional MRI (fMRI) was used to measure changes in brain connectivity.
Following data analyses, Becker and colleagues discovered that both the 3D and 2D video game training groups showed significant improvements in sustained attention compared to the control group.
This improvement was linked to increased functional connectivity in a network involving the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain associated with memory and executive function respectively.
Notably, patients who underwent videogame training also showed reductions in negative symptoms, such as anhedonia (losing the ability to feel pleasure from activities one typically usually enjoys) and amotivation (lack of motivation or drive to engage in normal day-to-day activities).
The patients also reported better overall mental health recovery. The authors propose an explanation for this: “the goal-driven and continuous interaction with the game may impact the patients’ experienced self-efficacy (defined as beliefs of how well one masters tasks and deals with prospective situations) which has been linked to mental health and psychopathology.”
The study’s findings suggest that videogames could be a valuable supplementary therapeutic approach for individuals with schizophrenia, particularly for addressing cognitive deficits and negative symptoms that are not well-managed by current treatments.
However, the study has some limitations. For instance, the authors described the sample size as being relatively small, due to patients dropping out of the study.
The study, “Videogame training increases clinical well-being, attention and hippocampal-prefrontal functional connectivity in patients with schizophrenia”, was authored by Maxi Becker, Djo J. Fischer, Simone Kühn, and Jürgen Gallinat.