World of Warcraft Staves Off Brain Deterioration?

Who Needs Sudoku to Stay Sharp?

World of Warcraft Good For Brain, Study Finds

Good news, gamers!

World of Warcraft has been found to stave off brain deterioration and aging. Imagine that.

Of course, we all know that keeping the brain active with activities like crossword puzzles and Sudoku can be beneficial, but who thought that the same effect could be achieved with video games?

Read: Super Mario Converse Sneakers (Photos)

Video games have historically gotten a bad rap for being mind numbing, but a recent study from researchers at North Carolina State University's lab, Gains Through Gaming, finds that video games can benefit the aging brain.

They specifically looked at the online role playing game World of Warcraft, where players interact with the environment and other players.

This type of game, as well as first person shooter games, io9 reports, allows players to "learn the game at their own pace, it's socially interactive, and gamers can play for hundreds of hours and still find themselves presented with novel challenges."

The researchers tested 39 adults ages 60 to 77 for certain cognitive abilities, then split them into a group that played World of Warcraft an hour a day for two weeks and a group that didn't play the game.

Read: Female Gamers Have More Sex Than You Do

io9 explains, "The researchers found that, as a whole, the WoW group saw a greater increase in cognitive performance than the control group, though improvements tended to vary on a person-to-person basis. Interestingly, the volunteers who saw the greatest improvements in cognitive abilities were those who had scored lowest on the initial, baseline test that had been administered two weeks prior."

Gains Through Gaming lab researcher Jason Allaire breaks it down: "the people who needed it most saw the greatest improvements."

Does this surprise you?