Home » Alzheimer’s, video games as a gym for the mind

Alzheimer’s, video games as a gym for the mind

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Countering the inevitable cognitive deterioration and behavioral disorders that characterize the evolution of Alzheimer’s to the sound of video games. Indeed of ‘exergame’, a specific category that requires the active involvement of the whole body. This is demonstrated by a recent study conducted in Belgium which tested for the first time the improvement of the physical and mental abilities of patients suffering from severe forms of dementia.

Not just drugs

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the appearance of various symptoms such as amnesia, apraxia, agnosia, space-time disorientation, agraphy, acalculia, intellectual deficits, changes in mood. In Italy, the total number of patients with dementia is estimated at over 1 million (of which about 600,000 with Alzheimer’s dementia) and about 3 million people are directly or indirectly involved in their care. To date there is no cure for this pathology (among other things on the increase), but in addition to the pharmacological treatment that intervenes on the symptoms and tries to slow down the degradation of the central nervous system tissue, a series of environmental interventions are also implemented which aim on the one hand to maintain the functional state of the patient, on the other hand to control non-cognitive symptoms (for example: apathy, aggression and psychotic disorders).

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The role of video games

International experts now believe it is important to implement psychosocial interventions, both for preventive purposes and for maintaining residual capacities. Among these, a great importance lies in the use of cognitive stimulation and video games on which many studies have focused in recent years. More recently, the focus has shifted to the so-called exergame, a category of video games in which the interaction is not only based on hand-eye coordination, but also extends to other parts of the body, presenting numerous potential advantages in the motor field. and the promotion of well-being, breaking an old stereotype, that of videogames complicit in a sedentary life, but rather managing to do a double job, because both the physical and cognitive spheres are exercised at the same time. In short, they become a useful ‘tool’ also in the rehabilitation field. In fact, neurodegenerative diseases often turn into an obstacle to physical activities, also leading to real sarcopenia.

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The role of the movement

Recently, a clinical study conducted in Belgium showed that motor cognitive training improves both the cognitive and physical abilities of patients with significantly impaired dementia. A fitness game, known as “Exergame”, developed by the spin-off of the ETH Zurich, Dividat. Back in 2015, a team of scientists had shown that older people who train their body and mind at the same time have better cognitive performance and can therefore also prevent deterioration. But this study had only been done on healthy subjects. “It has long been speculated that physical and cognitive training also has a positive effect on dementia,” explains the researcher Eling de Bruin of the Institute of Human Movement Sciences and Sport of the ETH Zurich. “However, in the past it has been difficult to motivate patients with dementia to engage in physical activity for prolonged periods.”

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The Senso platform

To overcome this obstacle, a personalized training program with fun exercises was created to encourage people who already had physical and cognitive problems to participate in training. Thus was born the Senso training platform consisting of a screen with the game software and a floor panel with four fields that measure steps, weight shift and balance. Users attempt to complete a sequence of foot movements as indicated on the screen, allowing them to train both physical movement and cognitive function simultaneously. The fact that the fitness game is also fun makes it easier to motivate subjects to exercise regularly.

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Eight weeks of ‘trial’

The international team of researchers recruited 45 subjects for the study. The patients, residing in two Belgian nursing homes, had an average age of 85 at the time of the study and all with symptoms of severe dementia. “The participants were divided into two groups on a random basis,” explains de Bruin. “The first group trained for 15 minutes with the Senso program three times a week for eight weeks, while the second group listened and watched music videos of their choice.” After the eight-week program, the physical, cognitive and mental capacity of all subjects was measured from the start of the study.

More attentive and focused

The results offer hope to patients with dementia and their relatives: training with this video game has, in fact, improved cognitive skills, such as attention, concentration, memory and orientation. “For the first time, there is hope that through targeted play we will be able not only to delay but also to weaken the symptoms of dementia,” de Bruin points out. It is particularly surprising that the control group further deteriorated during the eight-week period, while significant improvements were recorded in the study group.

The effects on the ability to react

But fun training doesn’t just have a positive impact on cognition – the researchers were also able to measure positive effects on physical capacity, such as reaction time. After just eight weeks, the subjects in the training group reacted significantly faster, while the control group deteriorated. This is encouraging as the speed at which older people respond to impulses is critical in determining whether they can avoid a fall.

Video games also for early detection

Other studies have investigated the possibility of using video games as an early diagnosis ‘tool’. In particular, Sea Hero Quest is a space navigation video game developed by the University College of London and the University of East Anglia that has made it possible to collect data on over 4 million players. The games analyzed show a profound link between poor spatial orientation and the possibility of early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease before the onset of the first clinical symptoms. For the brain, the virtual navigation experience is practically indistinguishable from what happens in the real world, starting from this the researchers compared the results of the control group with that of the experimental group which included players considered to be more at risk for the development of the Alzheimer’s as carriers of a gene associated with this disease. The two groups, according to the normal cognitive tests in the laboratory, presented an undifferentiated profile, but from the study of the data coming from the Sea Hero Quest games, for players of the same age, sex and country of origin, statistically valid differences emerged in able to recognize the onset of the disease.

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Virtual reality

In another study, conducted by scientists from the neurological research center Neuroscape At the University of San Francisco in California, a first-of-its-kind virtual reality video game has been pioneered that can improve memory in healthy and elderly adults. In the game titled Labyrinth-VR, players don a VR headset and navigate through ever larger neighborhoods and areas, completing missions of increasing complexity as the story progresses through 42 levels. The study involved 48 cognitively healthy older adults, with a mean age of 69 years. Half of the participants played Labyrinth-VR, while the other half, made up of the placebo group, played regular commercial video games. All participants played over twelve hours for a total of four weeks. During the game sessions, players walk in place and move their body, thus performing a physical exercise that increases cerebral blood flow, associated by researchers with the improvement of general cognitive performance. Participants in the virtual reality game significantly improved their memory compared to the placebo group, which turned out to be equal to that of 20-year-old gamers, by comparing the data obtained with the results of previous tests carried out on various demographic groups.

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