A new longitudinal study suggests that different video game genres can shape the brain in distinct ways and improve cognitive performance, with action games producing stronger and longer-lasting neural changes than turn-based strategy titles. The research, published in Brain Sciences, was conducted by scientists at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
As video games have cemented their position in global entertainment, researchers have increasingly explored their potential to influence the brain. Earlier work has hinted that regular gameplay can sharpen attention, memory and executive function—the set of mental skills governing flexible thinking and self-control.
Jingqing Lu, Dezhong Yao and colleagues designed a study to compare two very different gaming experiences. They recruited 68 college students who did not regularly play video games and randomly assigned them to one of two titles: an action game, League of Legends, or a turn-based strategy card game, Legends of the Three Kingdoms. Participants played for one hour a day, five days a week, over 20 weeks.
To observe how practice translated into cognitive gains and brain activity, the team assessed participants at six points over 30 weeks. How they performed on three computer-based tasks was tested, while resting brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG) with participants’ eyes closed.
The first task measured distributed spatial attention, requiring participants to remember the location of a brief visual cue and later identify a symbol in that spot on a screen. Over the training period, both groups became faster and more accurate, but those in the action game cohort showed a substantially larger improvement in accuracy that persisted through the final 10-week follow-up.
The second task tested spatial working memory, where participants watched a grid of flashing squares and had to judge whether a current square matched one shown earlier. Across the study, both groups responded more quickly as training progressed, while maintaining their initial accuracy. The action game players consistently performed better overall on this task.
In the final cognitive assessment, the researchers used a test of executive function involving coloured arrows. Participants pressed buttons based on rules that required them to ignore instinctive reactions and follow changing logic. Both groups cut their reaction times markedly without sacrificing accuracy, with no statistically significant difference in accuracy between the groups.
During the EEG sessions, the researchers focused on delta and theta waves and on alpha-band connectivity between brain regions. They observed increases in delta and theta power across the 30 weeks for both groups, accompanied by a reduction in alpha-band connectivity, a sign of streamlined neural networks.
Crucially, the action game group exhibited more pronounced brain changes. Ten weeks after training ended, action players showed higher slow-wave (delta/theta) activity and markedly lower alpha connectivity compared with their strategy-playing peers, mirroring their superior performance in attention and memory tasks.
While the findings point to cognitive and neural benefits from structured gaming, the researchers stressed the study’s limits. The participants trained for a modest amount of daily play and were young, healthy university students, raising questions about generalisation to children, older adults or those with cognitive impairments. Self-reported logs and limited data on whether participants played other games could introduce inaccuracies, and academics’ workload during testing was not tracked, potentially affecting fatigue or performance.
The study, titled “Effects of Video Game Type on Cognitive Performance and Brain Functional Connectivity: A Longitudinal EEG Study,” was authored by Jingqing Lu, Ruifang Cui, Lijun Jiang, Chenyu Mu, Weiyi Ma, Diankun Gong and Dezhong Yao.
