Are you the kind of parent who has always looked upon video games as just another frivolous way to waste time? Well, you might just have to eat your words!

The reason you might have to do that is because of recent reports claiming that video games, apart from entertaining kids, have been shown to enhance the capacity of the brain to weather ageing related effects. Effects that may affect the memorizing, reasoning and other areas pertaining to your cranial abilities that usually see a downslide as you age.

Researchers used the game "Rise of Nations" to test forty adult individuals, all in their 60's and 70's for over a period of just over a month. Half the selected individuals were assigned to play the game, while the rest were not assigned anything. The group assigned with the games, post the test analysis showed increased improvement in the cognitive functioning and overall brain skills. While the results concur with the results derived from similar studies done by others, researchers opine that further analysis would be required to ascertain if the effects of the games are long term in nature.

 
In the future, this could lead to "specially" designed games that would be used to treat people with ageing related effects or even as an exercise to boost one's cranial abilities!