Researchers at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China published a study that concluded that playing League of Legends enhances the brain’s capabilities, and more so than other games do.
The study spanned across 30 weeks over 68 university students and was published on December 25, 2025.
For this study, 68 university students with very little gaming experience were divided two groups.
Participants in one group went on to play League of Legends, and the others Legends of the Three Kingdoms (or Sanguosha). Sanguosha is a turn-based strategy card game.
Participants played their respective game one hour a day, five days a week, for 30 weeks, and almost no other games over that duration.
The researchers gave them assessments and electroencephalography recordings every five weeks, then another ten weeks after the end of the test period.
The two groups both showed improvements in cognitive abilities. Both games improved attention, working memory, and executive function, corroborating previous observations that gaming has diverse benefits for the brain.
Playing LoL reportedly empowers the brain. Image source: Riot Games
Beyond that, the League of Legends group improved more than Sanguosha’s did, and with longer-lasting effects.
Participants from the LoL group displayed bigger changes in how their brain processes information. Action game training involves distinct neural plasticity mechanisms, the study found.
League of Legends is a real-time game packed with information of various types to integrate, process, and react to. There’s a need to retain a lot of it, to make swift conclusions, and to act on them.
LoL and MOBAs in general apply an unrelenting cognitive load over the duration of a game, and observations show that this strengthens brain capabilities.
The participants took one final round of tests ten weeks after they stopped playing. These tests showed that the neural changes persisted among the League of Legends players ten weeks later.
The researchers concluded that all games improve the brain’s abilities, in different ways depending on the genre of the game. However, action games such as LoL induced stronger changes at a more persistent scale.
So, find your champion to play, and jump into a ranked game – for the sake of strengthening your brain!
Featured image source: Riot Games
21+ and present in VA. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
