![Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley in Melbourne with a game to clinically improve cognitive function. Photo: Joe Armao Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley in Melbourne with a game to clinically improve cognitive function. Photo: Joe Armao](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/7b939da4-50a4-44ca-9b75-c1fc8db377a3.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
A scapegoat for everything from encouraging violent behaviour to causing obesity, video games often get a bad wrap.
But American neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and his team of expert video game developers are looking to create a new class of games designed to help children learn.
Professor Gazzaley, who heads up Neuroscape Labs at the University of California, San Francisco, has already figured out how to improve brain function in older people using custom-designed video games.
Last year his team published a study in the journal Nature detailing how their 3D car racing game, NeuroRacer, increased short-term memory, long-term focus and multi-tasking in older people. Players as old as 80 showed neurological patterns similar to those in their 20s. The benefits were sustained even after they stopped playing the game.
The lab is now developing four new games looking at how gaming technology can assist children with learning. They will be evaluated in 2015 through extensive testing with children and young adults.
They include a game inspired by meditation, a rhythm training game and a game that simultaneously challenges physical and cognitive functions.
"I'm interested in working out how to improve brains not just as they're suffering, but as they're developing - as part of education," Professor Gazzaley told Fairfax Media ahead of a keynote speech at an Alzheimer Australia's Technology and Dementia forum in Melbourne on Tuesday.
"We'll have a branch of our research that's really devoted to looking at how the tools we're using impact on the developing brain as a new approach to education. We can do a lot more than a textbook on an iPad."
Building on the science of neuroplasticity, Gazzaley Labs' games are designed to target and strengthen specific neural pathways.
The difficulty level is dialled up or down by analysing player performance in real time until a "sweet spot" for cognitive training is found.
"The brain is able to respond and change at many levels in response to a challenge or stimulation," Professor Gazzaley said.
"Think of it as the ultimate personal trainer - it's there with you every second of the way."
The games can be tweaked to target different brain functions depending on the case, whether it is treating Alzheimer's, ADHD or schizophrenia.
During the trials on children - which could take over a year to be completed - neurological activity will be recorded and analysed during gameplay to improve game design along the way.
Importantly, Professor Gazzaley said, the players must enjoy playing the games so that they can be fully engaged with them and their benefits.
As to the gaming critics, Professor Gazzaley was careful to note that technology has the potential to change the brain in both positive and negative ways.
"That's just the challenge and the burden for researchers and developers - and companies and other groups that share these inventions with the world - to be responsible, and think about both the positive and negative," he said.
Professor Gazzaley has already met with various education groups around the world to discuss how the lab's custom-made games can be used as education tools.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the body responsible for the Australian curriculum from kindergarten to year 12, said it recognised the use of digital technology, including video games and "mobile media", as "beneficial in engaging students".
A European study published earlier this year also found that the more time people spent playing video games, the greater the brain volume in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and frontal eye fields - important brain regions for memory, decision-making and voluntary eye movement.