This Ipad game makes life easier for those with schizophrenia
A new game has been developed on the Ipad which helps people with schizophrenia improve their memory and help them to be more independent.
The game was developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge
Schizophrenia is a serious and chronic medical condition that disrupts the system that transmits messages in the brain. People suffering from this disease lose the ability to think and act clearly and correctly. The disease has many forms, and patients often suffer from different symptoms: hallucinations, memory loss, extreme paranoia, aggressiveness, etc. What they all have in common is a disconnect from reality.
Schizophrenia affects roughly 1% of the global population. It can manifest itself for the first time during childhood, but, most often, it shows up in the late teens and early twenties.
Medicines generally prescribed by doctors for the condition (antipsychotics, mood regulators…) may succeed in stabilizing certain symptoms, going so far as eliminating some, but do not always allow the patients to lead a normal social life.
According to the researchers that ran this study, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, “A recent systematic review of rehabilitation studies for schizophrenia concluded that a range of cognitive domains could be improved using computerized practice, suggesting that episodic memory difficulties may be one cognitive dysfunction amenable to computer-based CT.”
The study was run by a team of researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and was led by Professor Barbara Sahakian. To accomplish their goal, the team developed an app for the iPad called Wizard, which would allow them to find out if a game could have a positive effect on the social life of the patients, such as improving their episodic memory, but also to measure their levels of pleasure and motivation. With this in mind, they augmented memory tasks with a story in which the player could choose and name their own character, and players were rewarded with additional in-game activities that were independent of the cognitive training.
Twenty-two volunteers (11 male and 11 female) diagnosed with schizophrenia were recruited for this experiment. Two groups were formed, with ten people in one and 12 in the other. The first group followed the usual treatment, without playing, while the second group was encouraged to play the iPad game regularly over the course of four weeks.
At the end of this period, the researchers tested each participant’s episodic memory. They also measured their levels of pleasure and their motivation, as well as analyzed their scores on the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale, a scale used by mental health clinicians and physicians to rate subjectively the social, occupational, and psychological functioning of adults.
The results were very encouraging. The authors of the study concluded that “During training, participants’ levels of enjoyment and motivation to continue playing were monitored using visual analogue scales on an hourly basis. Participants in the CT group indicated that they enjoyed the game and were motivated to continue playing.”
The researchers suggest that programs such as this one could, in the future, become an interesting tool to potentially improve the daily life of people suffering with schizophrenia.
Category: Features, Technology & Devices
