Can You Diagnose Dementia from a Gaming App?

Can You Diagnose Dementia from a Gaming App?

More than two million healthy people played a game that could detect declining navigation skills, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s

By: Bahar Gholipour

             I randomly selected one of the sources were approved to use, browsed the articles, and chose an article that struck my eye in the scientific American. It was titled “Can you Diagnose Dementia from a Gaming App”. This to me was not only relevant to the world seeing many elderly individuals suffer with this disease but it was also personal because Dementia and Alzheimer’s runs in my family.

In this article, the author Bahar Gholipour goes into depth about a source that could potentially diagnose signs of Dementia and Alzheimer’s. It was a mobile app that allowed the users to use spatial navigation for memory purposes and then scientists would be able to analyze the performance based on age, race, location, etc. We learn in the article that people usually decline with navigational skills as age increases, but they don’t know exactly why that is. As the scientists analyzed the results of the game the younger the participant was the more memory they retained in the game, and the older they got the more significantly that memory dropped. Men performed better than women. It was also shocking that certain countries surrounded by each other all had the highest navigational skills versus other countries. Scientists are thinking that location may have something to do with spatial navigation but don’t know the cause as of yet. Scientists are hoping to use this app as a replacement for the language based memory tests, because it would take out the concern of different languages yielding different results. All in all this was a very basic, but informing article.

I personally loved reading this article. Whenever there is a way for someone to help prevent a disease or to find it in the early stages that means that we can try to stop it and see what is causing it by doing greater research. Personally I am not sure how beneficial this app will be for children since they are still growing and my not be able to comprehend the app. I bring this up because what if there was a correlation with Alzheimer’s and dementia at a younger age than the age people would be able to take this test? None the less it is still great they are doing something to diagnose this disease.

I learned that there is a lot of research and behind the scenes that can go on when a person plays an app. It is usually in the comfort of one’s own home and the scientists behind the scenes can analyze the performance for mostly unbiased results and use that in furthering research and gaining statistics for that purpose. This was an eye opening article for me and something that I am very passionate about helping find a cure. I have had loved ones pass away from this awful disease and it would be amazing if an app was able to diagnose it from an earlier age and help prevent it from taking over the patient’s mind!

-Joseph P

Gholipour, B. (2016). Can You Diagnose Dementia from a Gaming App? Retrieved November 23, 2016, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-diagnose-dementia-from-a-gaming-app/