Is video gaming good for you?

Turn off the computer and go outside and play! We’ve all heard the conventional wisdom that says video games will turn your brain to mush. But a host of new studies show that gaming might actually be good for your health. Researchers at Nottingham University found that playing certain video games could achieve in one hour what eye patches achieve in 400 hours, while researchers at the University of Rochester found that first-person shooter video games improve visual skills by increasing the brain’s capacity to spread attention over a wide range of events. But wait, there’s more! The Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, N.M., found that Tetris players developed a thicker cortex than those who didn’t play. And the Nintendo Wii has been helping Parkinson’s patients improve balance. So, are video games good for you?

To help answer that question we turn to technology writer Clive Thompson, the blogger for Collision Detection and a frequent contributor to Wired and The New York Times, and The Takeaway’s tech contributor Baratunde Thurston, host of “Popular Science’s Future Of,” a TV show on the Science Channel, to tell us how video gaming has more positive effects than you might think.