While playing games, dopamine is proven to be naturally ‘released’, so what other ‘medicine’ then playfulness would help us age healthy? A quote from a scientific article:
“The cognitive deterioration associated with aging is accompanied by structural alterations and loss of functionality of the frontostriatal dopamine system”
Read the full article: Brain training in progress: a review of trainability in healthy seniors
But still, after reading the full article… research on gaming is not easily executed, since conditions need to be excluded for proving hypotheses scietifically, but games are an complex intertwining of many mechanics and dynamics, and aesthetics therefor games and game elements can not easily be isolated… a challenge!