If you’re taking constant flak from friends and family about your World of Warcraft addiction, you’ve come to the right place. North Carolina State University has provided some hard evidence to show that grinding the MMO can actually increase your brain power. Well, in the elderly anyway.

A new study found that elderly players who played for just an hour a day increased their spatial awareness, improved their memory and focused their attention better. Effects on personal hygiene, social interaction and eating habits weren’t measured.

The group was ranged in age from 60 to 77, and divided into a control group who continued as normal, and another group who spent 14 hours killing wolves and bears over two weeks.

Cognitive tests were administered before and after the two week period, and the grinder group showed a marked increase in cognitive functioning compared to the control. Interestingly, those who had scored the lowest to begin with showed the most improvement.

As associate professor Dr. Jason Allaire puts it, “The people who needed it most — those who performed the worst on the initial testing — saw the most improvement.”

Unfortunately there was no test between World of Warcraft and other video games, so it’s not clear whether or not this kind of improvement can be seen with any reasonably complex video game (i.e. not Peggle) or if this is something particular to World of Warcraft.

It is also interesting to note that the participants spent very little time playing the game, only an hour per day on average, which is far less than the 22 hours a day* of the typical World of Warcraft player.

*citation needed

Source: Gamasutra