It seems gamers have always been stereotyped as being lazy and wasting their life away sitting in front of a screen and Playing games. Any gamer who plays on a regular basis has heard at least one or two snide comments directed at their hobby.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that playing video games actually helps train your brain to make better decisions, the myth persists that playing video games is bad for your mind.

Here’s a video explaining just how good video games are for your brain.

Science Daily reports researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland led an international team of scientists who collected and reviewed over 15 years of studies about video gaming and the brain.

The studies were collected from around the world and they covered both males and females ranging in age from 6 to 40. Their research led to two meta-analyses and was recently published in the journal Psychological Bulletin.

It’s the types of games that make a difference

After collecting and studying the data from all of the studies what the scientists found was both expected, but also surprising.

None of the scientists were surprised to learn that gaming increased players' Cognitive Functions, that has been established for years. It also doesn't matter if you prefer to play games on a PC or on a console.

What was surprising was the types of games played affect the brain in different ways.

The researchers conducted their own experiments with gamers to learn how brains adapted and learned with different types of gaming.

To make your brain grow head out to the battlefield

If you like FPS games over simulation games like SIMS, then you are doing your brain a big favor. Researchers found that gamers who enjoy first-person shooter (FPS) games like Halo or Call of Duty had increased their cognitive functions noticeably compared to people who played control games like Tetris or Pac-Man (for those of you who still play those games).

The researchers reached this conclusion after studying the cognitive functions of players before and after a 12 week period of time. During the three months of the study, gamers played about an hour of games a day, up eight hours a week for some.

At the end of the study period, the researchers reassessed the cognitive functions of the players.

The gamers who had played the action games, the FPS, had the largest increase in their cognitive functioning abilities.

Researchers are hopeful that they will be able to use their findings to explore how video games could be used to help people increase their cognitive skills.

Researchers also pointed out they had test subjects play a limited amount of games every day. In other words, don’t go binge playing your favorite game. Playing a short amount of every day is much better for you than cramming a 20-hour game session once a week.