Playing video games makes your brain younger but exercise does not, a study suggests.

Regular players of video games such as FIFA, Grand Theft Auto and Minecraft were found to have the mental ability of a person more than a decade younger with improved memory, attention and reasoning skills.

There were no cognitive improvements seen for non-gamers who are physically active and meet the 150 minutes of weekly activity recommended by the NHS.

However, being active was found to improve mental health, scientists found.

The findings contradict the widely held belief that exercise can improve cognitive skills.

Data from brain tests of more than 1,000 people were compared with questionnaires asking participants how often they played games as well as their lifestyle.

“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 (who did not play video games),” study author Professor Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist from Western University in Canada, said.

“Individuals who engaged infrequently with video games and played less than five hours per week across all kinds of games, performed like people 5.2 years younger.”

Likely to have anxiety

Prof Owen added that those who did not meet the NHS recommendations for physical activity were twice as likely to suffer from depression and 1.5 times more likely to have anxiety.

The work, presented at the Manchester Science Festival and published online at PsyArXiv, was “surprising to the researchers”, they said.

“We conclude that exercise and video gaming have differential effects on the brain, which may help individuals tailor their lifestyle choices to promote mental and cognitive health, respectively, across the lifespan,” they write in their study.

Prof Owen said previous studies had shown that brain training games do not improve cognitive function and that the mental benefits could be a result of the intense nature of many popular modern games.

“The sorts of games that frequent gamers play nowadays are really quite different from consumer brain training games,” he said.

“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.”

Health officials, including the WHO, have stated previously that exercise can improve mental abilities, which was not supported with the latest study,

Sharper after a workout

“As for exercise not affecting cognition, that was also a surprise, given the World Health Organisation recommendations that moderate exercise can benefit cognition,” Prof Owen said.

“However, we only looked at the long-term effects of regular exercise so it may well be that a short burst of vigorous exercise does affect cognition as many people report feeling ‘sharper’ after a workout.”

For the study, conducted at the UK’s Science Museum Group, 1,000 people were asked questions about their health and lifestyle.

They also took tests that measured aspects of cognition such as learning, attention, perception and memory skills.

They were also asked to estimate the average number of hours per week they spent playing video games within the past 12 months.

These could be  puzzle games such as Minecraft, Civilization, Hearthstone and Roblox, action role-playing games such as The Witcher, Mass Effect, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed, and sports games such as FIFA, NHL, Mario Kart, Need for Speed and Rocket League.

Prof Owen said the findings could “help us choose activities that promote healthy cognitive ageing”.