Video game sharpens seniors' brain power

A video game focussing on strategy has been found to sharpen brain power in ageing people.

A new study found that people in their 60s and 70s can improve a number of cognitive functions by playing "Rise of Nations", a game that rewards nation-building and territorial expansion.

"Rise of Nations gives gamers points for building cities and 'wonders', feeding and employing their people, maintaining an adequate military and expanding their territory. You need merchants. You need an army to protect yourself and you have to make sure you're spending some of your resources on education and food," said the authors of the study.

This is the first such study of older adults, and it is the first to find such pronounced effects on cognitive skills not directly related to the skills learned in the video game, said University of Illinois psychology professor Arthur Kramer, who co-authored the study.

Decades of lab studies designed to improve specific cognitive skills, like short-term memory, have repeatedly found that trainees improve almost exclusively on the tasks they perform in the lab - and only under lab conditions, Kramer said.

"When you train somebody on a task they tend to improve in that task, whatever it is, but it usually does not transfer much beyond that skill or beyond the particular situation in which they learned it," he said.

Specifically, the researchers wondered whether interactive video games might benefit those cognitive functions that decline most with age, said a University of Illinois release.

The study included 40 older adults, half of whom received 23.5 hours of training in Rise of Nations. The others, a comparison group, received no training in the game.

Both groups were assessed before, during and after the video game training on a variety of tests designed to measure executive control functions, and the researchers found that training on the video game did improve the participants' performance on a number of these tests.

As a group, the gamers became significantly better - and faster - at switching between tasks as compared to the comparison group.

Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, was also significantly improved. Their reasoning ability was enhanced.

The research is scheduled for publication this month's issue of journal Psychology & Aging.

Is sea-level rise underestimated?

Grim scenario: The Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet would together raise sea levels 12 metres if they were to melt..............

One of the most controversial areas of climate science is how high the seas are likely to rise in a warmer world. Last year, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that sea levels would rise by 15-59cm this century, an average of 38.5cm.
Climate sceptics said the figures were proof that the panel was downgrading the risk, as an IPCC report in 2001 had predicted 48.5cm.
Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, said: “Some are raising the [sea level] issue as being far more alarming than we had projected, but in the synthesis report we clearly said that we didn’t know enough and therefore we can’t place an upper limit on sea level rise this century.”
The uncertainty derives from how the Earth’s giant ice sheets will react to warmer temperatures. Of far more significance is the vast amount of water locked in the ice sheets of the polar regions.
The Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet would together raise sea levels 12 metres if they were to melt. The East Antarctic ice sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels 50-60 metres, but is thought to be more resistant to global warming. Several hundred thousand small glaciers could also contribute.
The question is how quickly all that ice could crumble into the sea as global warming takes hold. Measurements on the ground and from space suggest the Greenland melt is accelerating, though scientists have struggled to recreate the process in computer models, which makes projections difficult.
In September, a team led by Tad Pfeffer at the University of Colorado at Boulder, published calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers and ice caps.
They concluded the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of roughly 100-200cm by 2100.
Jim Hansen, of Nasa, has argued that most estimates of sea level rise are too conservative. He says that feedbacks in the climate system would accelerate ice melt, and lead to collapse. — Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008