Can Gaming Strengthen Your Brain?
<p>Up<em>up, down down, left right, left right, B A, select start</em>. If, like me, you grew up in the 1990s and played video games, that bit of gibberish needs no explanation. It’s a famous Nintendo “cheat code” that grants a player unlimited lives or other gameplay perks.</p>
<p>I learned it during the countless days I spent as a kid playing <em>Super Contra</em>, a game that pitted two Rambo-esque soldiers against an army of robot-alien invaders. My brothers and I would sit together in our basement, cracking jokes, thumbs aflutter, for hours at a stretch.</p>
<p>I’m sure that our video game habit helped preserve my parents’ sanity during our years of frenzied, hyperactive boydom. But the idea that <em>Mega Man</em> or <em>The Legend of Zelda</em> might have been strengthening my brain or bolstering my mental health would have seemed preposterous to them. </p>
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