Diverse Digital Interventions Remediate Cognitive Aging in Healthy Older Adults:
After a decade of work, scientists at UC San Francisco's Neuroscape Center have developed a suite of video game interventions that improve key aspects of cognition in aging adults.
The games, which co-creator Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, says can be adapted to clinical populations as a new form of "experiential medicine," showed benefits on an array of important cognitive processes, including short-term memory, attention and long-term memory.
Each employs adaptive closed-loop algorithms that Gazzaley's lab pioneered in the widely cited 2013 Neuroracer study published in Nature, which first demonstrated it was possible to restore diminished mental faculties in older people with just four weeks of training on a specially designed video game.
These algorithms achieve better results than commercial games by automatically increasing or decreasing in difficulty, depending on how well someone is playing the game. That keeps less skilled players from becoming overwhelmed, while still challenging those with greater ability. The games using these algorithms recreate common activities, such as driving, exercising and playing a drum, and use the skills each can engender to retrain cognitive processes that become deficient with age.
[...] The lab's most recent invention is a musical rhythm game, developed in consultation with drummer Mickey Hart, that not only taught the 60 to 79-year-old participants how to drum, but also improved their ability to remember faces. [...]
[...] A second game, the Body Brain Trainer, published recently in NPJ Aging, improved blood pressure, balance and attention in a group of healthy older adults with eight weeks of training. [...]
[...] Neuroscape published the results of yet another study last year in Scientific Reports on a virtual reality spatial navigation game called Labyrinth that improved long-term memory in older adults after four weeks of training.
All three studies demonstrated their results in randomized clinical trials, extending the finding from 2013 that digital training can enhance waning cognitive faculties in older adults.
"These are all targeting cognitive control, an ability that is deficient in older adults and that is critical for their quality of life," Gazzaley said. "These games all have the same underlying adaptive algorithms and approach, but they are using very, very different types of activity. And in all of them we show that you can improve cognitive abilities in this population."
Previously:
Gaming Can Improve our Cognitive Abilities
Video Game Approved as Prescription Medicine
Journal References:
Theodore P. Zanto, Vinith Johnson, Avery Ostrand, and Adam Gazzaley, How musical rhythm training improves short-term memory for faces, PNAS, 2022. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2201655119
Anguera, J.A., Volponi, J.J., Simon, A.J. et al. Integrated cognitive and physical fitness training enhances attention abilities in older adults [open]. npj Aging 8, 12 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41514-022-00093-y
Wais, P.E., Arioli, M., Anguera-Singla, R. et al. Virtual reality video game improves high-fidelity memory in older adults [open]. Sci Rep 11, 2552 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-82109-3
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A researcher at University of California San Francisco has created an adaptive game with inputs from EEGs and fMRIs to enhance cognition in study participants:
The first step is to identify the target—the different facets of our cognitive capabilities and the underlying neural systems that drive them. These include attention, working memory and goal management. Gazzaley and his team measure these functions using fMRI and EEG. "We can gather biomarkers so we can see if we're having the impact we're looking for."
The second step focuses on taking advantage of the neuroplasticity of the brain to try and modify its functions. The chosen tool for achieving this is video games—"they are an immersive engaging interactive way of changing behaviour. Something happens in the brain when playing. The video game records in real time and adapts itself as well as giving feedback," explains Gazzaley. That goes back to your brain and creates the desired closed loop.
Finally, the team focuses on enhancing the effects by using high-resolution neural feedback to modify the game going forward. The team is using the Unity gaming engine to collate the data garnered from this.
One game the team has already created, Neuroracer, has already shown that 12 hours of gaming a week among 60- to 80-year-olds dramatically improves their ability to multitask, beyond the abilities of a 20-year-old playing the game for the first time. They are now carrying out a three-year study, to see how the game can be used as a diagnostics tool.
Gamification has been trying to devise ways to mimic the immersive quality of gaming in more training- and productive settings. Is biofeedback the missing link?
Video Game Approved as Prescription Medicine:
This summer, a video game became available by prescription in the United States. This first-ever FDA-approved digital treatment builds on a tradition of gaming as a therapeutic tool that extends back more than a decade. Its game play gets good reviews, too.
[...] On 15 June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its approval of a first-person racing game called EndeavorRx. Boston-based Akili Interactive Labs, maker of the game, says its racer was originally licensed from the lab of Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. The company touts four peer-reviewed studies (in PLOS One, The Lancet Digital Health, The Journal of Autism, and Developmental Disorders) as well as one paper in process as support for its claims that EndeavorRx significantly improves clinical markers of attention in patients with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
"EndeavorRx looks and feels like a traditional game, but it's very different," says Matt Omernick, Akili cofounder and the company's chief creative officer. "EndeavorRx uses a video-game experience to present specific sensory stimuli and simultaneous motor challenges designed to target and activate the prefrontal cortex of the brain.... As a child progresses in game play, the technology is continuously measuring their performance and using adaptive algorithms to adjust the difficulty and personalize the treatment experience for each individual."
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 25 2022, @02:25PM (1 child)
Somehow I don't think any of these games they developed will be coming to Steam anytime soon or will be any kind of AAA-rated productions. Still a lot of small indie games are usually more fun and better then the big productions.
That said I know I always feel a little better after shooting some Nazis, Aliens, Undead or a combination of all of them. So I'm not wasting my time playing computer games -- I'm healing!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 25 2022, @02:30PM
It's called venting frustration. Venting frustration on pixels is much healthier than some versions of venting frustration. Still, it's probably less healthy than venting your frustration by exercising.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 25 2022, @02:26PM
Video games can be used for things other than simulated warfare (FPS Games)? Imagine that.
Video games have gotten a bad rap for the most part. Just like watching a show about a serial murderer, doesn't turn you into a serial murderer. Playing a game, doesn't turn you into a murderer. Though, as shown in this study, video games can teach you. There's probably some middle ground of (doesn't turn you into a murderer/negatively impacts your psyche and turns you into an angel/my life is perfect). For example, I noticed my wife was negatively impacted by watching Criminal Minds. I convinced her that it was negatively impacting her and she should watch fluffy pony kinds of things or just about anything other than Criminal Minds. Low and behold, she was being negatively impacted by watching Criminal Minds and felt better after she quit watching the show. Also, some people are just much easier to influence. While I don't think she will ever become a serial murderer or detective for that matter. She definitely was influenced by said show.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"