Effect of task-specific strategy on video game training outcome of healthy elderly and traumatic brain injury patients

Several research studies have shown the effect of video gaming on cognitive abilities of healthy individuals such as improved top-down attentional control, identification of peripheral targets, and visual search speed. But video game training has also revealed beneficial effects in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients by enhancing their memory function and visual attention, and activity in certain brain regions. There is also evidence for brain plasticity effects in terms of changes in early visual EEG responses called event-related potentials (ERPs). Our objective is to investigate the effect of adopted strategy on video game training and transfer to untrained tasks, from behavioral and ERP perspective, in healthy elder adults and TBI patients suffering from a temporary decrease in attentionrelated performance. We will consider instructed strategy- and noninstructed strategy groups, as well as a passive control group not trained on the video game. We hypothesize significant changes in behavioral responses, for trained and untrained cognitive tasks, and in early visual ERP components for both strategy groups, more for the instructed-strategy group, and no significant improvement in untrained cognitive tasks for the passive control group. We expect to better understand the impact of strategy on training outcome, and how many sessions are needed to obtain lasting effects, and which transfer effects to expect, in both healthy elder adults and TBI patients.