Playing games against dementia: VR game saves grey matter

The successful free game Sea Hero Quest is used to research dementia. It has been downloaded millions of times. Now there is a VR version that collects even more precise data.

There are perhaps more exciting games than Sea Hero Quest. Nevertheless, Deutsche Telekom's free adventure game for Android and Apple devices has become a hit. More than three million people have steered a small boat for a good year, using only icebergs and bays for orientation. Neither GPS nor compass assisted the players in their search for treasure through diverse areas such as an ice-covered polar landscape. They have to memorise a map and then off they go.

Data from game for dementia research

With the game, the app navigator trains his memory and the scientists collect anonymised data on the spatial orientation of people of all ages. After each level of the game is reached, the player can answer questions about himself, especially about his fitness, but he does not have to. The findings have been incorporated into the most comprehensive study on dementia research.

Even more precise measurements thanks to VR

"The mobile game Sea Hero Quest has provided us with an unprecedented amount of data through which we have been able to measure spatial orientation ability in a cross-section of the population," says Dr Hugo Spiers from University College London. The neuroscientist is one of the theorists behind the game app, along with colleagues from University College London and the University of East Anglia, and the charity Alzheimer's Research UK.

With the Sea Hero Quest variant for Virtual Reality, even the smallest body movements of the players are now registered. Movements are recorded ten times per second as the player moves through different virtual environments. Movements on all three axes of a head position can be recorded. According to Telekom, two minutes of gameplay correspond to around five hours of conventional clinical research.

From now on, owners of a Samsung Gear VR can download the game for free in the Oculus Store.

Source: Star