{"id":92732,"date":"2019-04-29T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T22:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/341701"},"modified":"2019-04-29T22:06:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T22:06:00","slug":"a-vr-game-is-helping-researchers-learn-about-and-potentially-detect-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/04\/29\/a-vr-game-is-helping-researchers-learn-about-and-potentially-detect-alzheimers\/","title":{"rendered":"A VR game is helping researchers learn about and potentially detect Alzheimer&#8217;s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers are using a VR game to help study Alzheimer&#8217;s and dementia and say that, over just a few years, the game has already collected the equivalent of 1,700 years worth of data.<\/p>\n<p>A study spotted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kotaku.co.uk\/2019\/04\/28\/a-video-game-developed-to-detect-alzheimers-disease-seems-to-be-working\">Kotaku UK<\/a>&nbsp;on <em>Sea Hero Quest<\/em> shows how the VR game has helped researchers collect information on the early signs of Alzheimer\u2019s on a large scale in a limited period of time.<\/p>\n<p>The game itself tasks its players with navigating a virtual boat using checkpoints that they have to commit to memory. It\u2019s a loop aimed at analyzing some of the earlier symptoms of Alzheimer\u2019s, as opposed to the more widely known late-stage symptoms such as severe memory loss.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers estimate that two minutes of gameplay equates to around five&nbsp;hours of lab-based research, and the project has made it possible for the team to rapidly collect data that can then be used as a baseline to compare more focused tests against<\/p>\n<p>For instance, they studied people carrying a specific gene, APOE4, thought to be linked to dementia and compared their performance against players who didn\u2019t have the APOE4 gene. The study found that those players with a high genetic risk typically took less efficient routes and performed worse on tasks involving spatial navigation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>XRDC 2019 is looking for speakers!&nbsp;<a data-auth=\"NotApplicable\" href=\"http:\/\/www.xrdconf.com\/conference\/c4p\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Submit your talk here.<\/a>&nbsp;(XRDC and Gamasutra are UBM Americas brands.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers are using a VR game to help study Alzheimer&#8217;s and dementia and say that, over just a few years, the game has already collected the equivalent of 1,700 years worth of data. A study spotted by Kotaku UK&nbsp;on Sea Hero Quest shows how the VR game has helped researchers collect information on the early [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}