Early detection of Alzheimer’s just by playing games?

Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia that causes cognitive function, memory decline, and personality changes. However, research shows that the disease, which is afflicted by thousands of people around the world, can be detected early by playing a puzzle adventure game called Sea Hero Quest.

The main symptom of Alzheimer’s is poor memory. However, poor memory is a late symptom. By the time you notice the memory loss, it means that the disease has already progressed considerably. The initial sign of memory decline is that spatial orientation is lowered. It is said that playing a game can help to spot this sign.

The puzzle adventure game called Sea Hero Quest was jointly developed by Deutsche Telecom, a German mobile operator, with a university research team. More than 4.3 million people have already downloaded and enjoyed it. In fact, this game is designed to be able to study how dementia patients will explore space. Gameplay data can be analyzed and used to research Alzheimer’s disease.

Gamers must control virtual spaceships and complete various quests. When you start the game, an old map opens in front of you. When the quest comes out, you can challenge it, but the field map appears in front of you, so remember this and control the shelf to aim for the checkpoint. Head to the checkpoint you remembered while avoiding the coast and icebergs. When it reaches it safely, it moves on to the next step.

As the gamer passes through the maze of islands and icebergs, play data is converted into research data every 0.5 seconds. The research team said the data was able to detect early risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The research data that can be collected by playing this game for two minutes is said to be equivalent to five hours of data obtained through experiments in the laboratory. This data gathered from all over the world is comparable to 1,700 years of laboratory data.

The University of East Anglia research team formed a baseline score based on play data obtained from 27,000 gamers aged 50 to 75 residing in the UK. A group of 60 people in the lab also received this data to investigate the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

A group of 60 people had been genetically tested and 31 were found to have the APOE4 gene, which is linked to Alzheimer’s. The APOE4 gene, which is carried by one in four people, triples the risk of developing Alzheimer’s when they are young.

Professor Michael Hornberger, who led the study, said the experiment found that participants with the APOE4 gene were less likely to search for space. They did not know an efficient route to get to the checkpoint. Even in a state in which memory deterioration cannot be seen, the risk of Alzheimer’s can be detected early by checking spatial orientation in the game. On the other hand, people who do not have a genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease showed almost the same level as the baseline score.

Professor Hornberger said that by 2050, as many as 135 million people will become dementia, stressing the need to detect the risk of dementia early. The study explains that it shows that Alzheimer’s disease can be detected early by detecting impaired exploration without memory deficits. You can download the mobile version of this game from Google Play and enjoy it with the Oculus VR headset. Related information can be found here .