Have you ever had an older relative see you playing video games and have them pompously say to you, “Those things will rot your brain?” Well, it turns out they were wrong, in fact they were so wrong that I think it may constitute irony. As it turns out, video games may actually keep your brain from rotting. According to this article from Reuters, video games may benefit the aging brain. In a study of 40 adults in their 60s and 70s, researchers found that those who learned to play a strategy-heavy video game (the game used in the study was “Rise of Nations”) improved their scores in a number of tests of cognitive function. The article goes on to state that this is the first study to suggest such findings but the results were, “very promising.”

I always said I would be a gamer until I died, now I have a great excuse. We’ll know that the elderly are a target demographic as soon as we see the first “Murder She Wrote,” survival horror game.