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The game, called
Sea Quest Hero and developed by Deutsche Telekom and Alzheimer’s
Research UK, was launched in May and has already generated
enough data to help create a global benchmark for the human
brain's navigational processes and how they vary between men and
women, and between the young and old.
It has been played more than 2.4 million times worldwide, giving
more than 9,400 years' worth of equivalent lab-based research,
the scientists said on Wednesday - and is showing the potential
to be able to help diagnose dementia earlier.
According to the World Health Organization, the total number of
people with dementia in 2015 was estimated at 47.5 million, and
that number is rising rapidly as life expectancy increases and
societies age. Case numbers are projected to reach 75.6 million
by 2030, and to more than triple between now and 2050.
The incurable condition is a leading cause of disability and
dependency, and is starting to overtake heart disease as a cause
of death in some developed countries.
Dementia is caused by brain diseases, most commonly Alzheimer's
disease, which result in the loss of brain cells and affect
memory, thinking, behavior, navigational and spatial abilities
and the ability to perform everyday activities.
Hugo Spiers, a neuroscientist at Britain's University College
London who led the research team, said the Sea Hero study was
unprecedented in both scale and accuracy.
"The findings the game is yielding have enormous potential to
support vital developments in dementia research," he said.
In preliminary results, published and presented at a
neuroscience conference in the United States, scientists found
that spatial navigation abilities start to decline from early
adulthood continue on this trajectory.
Players aged 19, for example, were 74 percent likely to
accurately hit a target during the game, compared with 46
percent among 75-year-old players.
Spiers said this was in stark contrast to findings of previous
small studies, which suggest declines start much later.
While memory deterioration is a fairly normal part of ageing,
Spiers explained that becoming completely disoriented is not. It
is, however, common in people developing dementia.
This means the benchmark established by the initial data from
Sea Hero Quest players paves the way to finding the earliest
spatial navigational changes, he said. This makes dementia
potentially diagnosable long before someone displays symptoms of
general memory loss. In turn, this could allow for earlier
diagnosis and treatment of patients.
Since the game's data shows changes in spatial navigation
abilities - both declines and improvements - it could also be
used in future drug trials to assess the effectiveness of
possible treatments, the researchers said.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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