Neurocognitive Stimulation Game: Serious Game for Neurocognitive Stimulation and Assessment

Abstract

The ageing process is naturally accompanied by changes in people's cognitive processes. The European population ageing is a challenge for the European social policy and for the mental health professionals. New technologies can play an important role in the neurocognitive stimulation area as they possess characteristics that might reduce the anxiety levels of patients participating in neurocognitive stimulation or assessment programs. In particular, serious games provide a setting that can be explored to improve the easy access to neurocognitive stimulation and assessment, regardless of place and time, at a lower cost then traditional approaches. This paper presents a serious game aiming to analyse neurocognitive deficits and stimulate the players' deficitary neurocognitive processes. This game is built on top of sound neurocognitive psychotherapy for adults, mainly addressing the cognitive processes of attention and memory. The game will simulate real world scenarios, allowing a better generalization process due to ecological validity.

Machine learning and Serious Game for the Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

“…At the end of the session, participants received a self-assessment questionnaire on the gaming experience. Costa et al (2017) developed SynapseToLife, a serious game designed for stimulation and neurocognitive assessment, aimed at analyzing intellectual impairments in the elderly and including attention and memory. This game aims to reduce the impact of the low ecological validity and motivation for the players through scenarios that are related to daily reality.…”

“…The cognitive decline of older adults may interfere with access to video games, suggesting that the design of serious games adapted to the cognitive needs of people with Alzheimer’s disease should be encouraged Bouchard et al, 2012; Imbeault et al, 2011. Until now, there are very few games that target older people (Bouchard et al, 2012; Imbeault et al, 2011; Carvalho et al, 2016; Manera et al, 2015; Narme, 2016; Rodriguez-Fortiz et al, 2016; Costa et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2017; Yun et al, 2020) and are non-existent in Arab countries.…”