47 million people are affected by dementia worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). To help detect the first signs of the disease, researchers from University College London, the University of East Anglia and Alzheimer’s Research UK (United Kingdom) have participated in the development of a game, dubbed Sea Hero Quest. Launched in 2016 on iOS and Android, it is available in virtual reality this Tuesday.
Work on memory and sense of direction
One of the first symptoms of dementia being the loss of orientation, this game allows its users to slip into the skin of a browser. The goal ? Call on their memory and their sense of direction to steer their boat and win the races. To date, nearly 3 million people have tried the experiment, making this game the largest study of all time on dementia, according to its creators. Indeed, “by playing two minutes, users generate an amount of data corresponding to what scientists would collect in five hours in the context of similar work in the laboratory”, can we read on the site game internet.
The data collected is then transmitted anonymously to the creators in order to advance their research: thanks to these elements, they have already been able to prove that the capacities of space navigation begin to decline from the age of 19. With the virtual reality version of Sea Hero Quest, in which users move by simple eye movement, the creators hope to reach a more old of the population, specifies theAFP.
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