http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/04/health/dementia-game-sea-hero-quest/?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool
Have you ever wanted to take to the seas on a global adventure? A new game available on smartphones worldwide from today does just that -- and could help dementia patients in the process.
The game, called Sea Hero Quest,
asks players to set sail in search of precious artifacts -- in the form
of memories -- which can be collected at different locations around the
world.
As
you progress through the game, scientists can use the data you generate
to gain insight into your spatial navigation abilities -- one of the
first skills lost at the onset of dementia.
The
aim is to get hundreds of thousands of people playing from around the
world, to identify what the normal range of navigation skills are among
people in general.
Once that is established, neuroscientists could then identify further guidelines to spot dementia early.
How big a problem is dementia?
Despite being potentially preventable in one-third of cases,
it's estimated that someone develops dementia globally every three
seconds. In 2015, more than 46 million people were living with dementia
worldwide, according to the World Alzheimer Report 2015.
The
condition is a collection of symptoms, such as memory loss,
difficulties in thinking or problem-solving, and reduced ability to
navigate, and is caused by diseases including Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's.
"Dementia is
increasingly becoming one of the greatest medical challenges we face
globally," says Hilary Evans, Chief Executive of Alzheimer's Research UK.
"It is a disease you can prevent...it's not an inevitable part of ageing."
Despite
the high numbers affected, an accurate test for the condition remains
unavailable. But this could be about to change -- depending on the
popularity of Sea Hero Quest.
"[The game] can tell us: 'How do people get lost?' says Hugo Spiers, a neuroscientist at University College London (UCL), who is leading the research stemming from the game's data.
"Fundamentally
people with dementia -- Alzheimer's dementia -- struggle to navigate
and on a scientific level we don't know enough of how people navigate to
help really pin down what's going wrong," he said.
The need for global data
The
team want at least 100,000 people to play the game by the end of 2016
to provide the ideal range of data needed to provide this missing
information. Data will be anonymous and only available to researchers at
UCL.
"Step one is establishing
this live database of how do people navigate...that gives us the tool to
develop that diagnostic," said Spiers.
The
team imagine a future scenario in which people suffering from dementia
can be identified early -- by playing the game -- and trialed on
relevant drugs to stop the disease taking full hold of their mind.
"You could give them [the game] and monitor if the drug is effective in a really powerful way," added Spiers.
Next step: Brain imaging
In
the next stages of the project, Spiers would like to have volunteers
play the game while having their brain scanned in order to see which
parts of are active, and link this to patterns seen in the population
worldwide.
"I hope to collect
neuroimaging data from people playing this game to really understand how
the circuits are activated as people play the game," says Spiers.
This is not the first use of mobile games to crowdsource data for scientists. Cancer Research UK have launched five games to date, including Play to Cure: Genes in Space
in 2014, which obtained data as people traveled through space and
helped identify codes and patterns along their way -- unwittingly.
This
time, as players travel the seas instead of space, their navigation
choices and strategies will be the data of use as they're set new and
changing challenges to test their true abilities.
Sea
hero quest, available on iOS and Android from May 4, was created in a
collaboration between Deutsche Telecom, Alzheimer's Research UK,
Scientists from University College London and the University of East
Anglia and game designers Glitchers.
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