Making time for dance, art and even some video games could help keep your brain young — because a recent study has found that creative pursuits can slow brain aging by up to seven years! When researchers want to look at the difference between someone's chronological age and their brain's age in terms of how well it functions, they can use a technique called a "brain clock." This analyzes brain activity patterns to look at how old a brain seems to be, regardless of what year the individual was born. The new study, published in Nature Communications, used this technique while looking at the brain data of almost 1,500 people living in 13 different countries. A number of participants were people who were experts in various creative activities, including music, art and dancing the tango. The study also included people who played video games — specifically those who were experts at Starcraft II, and another group who were learning to play the same game. The creative experts — including the video game players — were judged compared with non-experts. And the researchers found that, in general, those who had mastered one of these pursuits seemed to have brains that were four to seven years younger than those who hadn't. In fact, the more skilled someone was in their activity, the younger their brain appeared to be. This suggests that the brain benefits of being creative might build over time, and the researchers included an experiment to see what the effects of starting something new could be, using gamers. The study had non-gamer participants do 30 hours for Starcraft II training over three to four weeks. Starcraft II is a strategy game that relies on making quick decisions, and it is difficult to master. After the non-gamers had been trained in the game, their brain age fell, while a control group playing a different, less complicated game showed no such changes.