Virtual reality games and related neurotechnologies spark a new generation of dementia & cognitive tests

The Sea Hero Quest vir­tu­al real­i­ty game is played on a Sam­sung Gear VR head­set. Source: Glitch­ers Ltd.

__________

The Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Game Gath­er­ing Data for Demen­tia Researchers (Bloomberg):

“Nav­i­gat­ing an ice-walled lake or scour­ing a swamp for a hid­den mon­ster may sound like a fun premise for a vir­tu­al-real­i­ty video game. But there’s a seri­ous pur­pose behind the new game Sea Hero Quest VR: help­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists design a new test for dementia.

Lon­don-based game design firm Glitch­ers worked with researchers from British and Swiss uni­ver­si­ties, as well as demen­tia and Alzheimer’s char­i­ties, to cre­ate Sea Hero Quest VR. Devel­op­ment of the free-to-down­load game, which is being released Tues­day for Samsung’s Gear VR head­set and Face­book Inc.’s Ocu­lus Rift, was fund­ed by Ger­man mobile car­ri­er Deutsche Telekom AG…Neuroscientists and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gists will ana­lyze the data to hope­ful­ly learn more about how humans devel­op spa­tial aware­ness and nav­i­gate new envi­ron­ments. Researchers believe sub­tle degra­da­tion in these skills may be an ear­ly warn­ing sign of demen­tia and that infor­ma­tion from the game could even­tu­al­ly lead to new tests to detect cog­ni­tive impair­ment earlier.”

News in Context

• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• 10 neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment and brain health
• Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty (VR) meet brain scan­ning and human enhancement
• Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy can improve our lives…if we first address these Pri­va­cy and Informed Con­sent issues
• Eval­u­at­ing neur­al respons­es via EEG brain data in vir­tu­al real­i­ty envi­ron­ments: Key neu­rotech patent by The Nielsen Company
• 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th, 2017)