Abstract
As the proportion of elderly people continues to grow, so does the concern about age-related cognitive decline. Serious games have been developed for cognitive training or treatment, but measuring the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has not been taken to account. However, cognitive functioning has been known to be heavily influenced by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and ANS activity can be quantified using heart rate variability (HRV). This paper aims to analyze the physiological response in normal elderly people as they play two types of serious games using HRV features from electrocardiography (ECG). A wearable device designed in-house was used to measure ECG, and the data from this device was pre-processed using digital signal processing techniques. Ten HRV features were extracted, including time-domain, nonlinear, and frequency-domain features. The experiment proceeds as follows: rest for three minutes, play a cognitive aptitude game, rest for another three minutes, followed by two reaction time games. Data from thirty older adults (age: 65.9 ± 7.34; male: 15, female: 15) were analyzed. The statistical results show that there was a significant difference in the HRV between the two types of games. From this, it can be concluded that the type of game has a significant effect on the ANS response. This can be further used in designing games for the elderly, either for training or mood management.
Highlights
IntroductionThe pace of global population aging is continuously increasing
It has a larger size compared to other commercial devices, since it was designed to handle different analog modules, such as modules for other biosignals
The ECG analog module was tested for its frequency response with a signal input of
Summary
The pace of global population aging is continuously increasing. This trend will continue to rise as fertility decreases while the human life expectancy continues to increase, due to better healthcare and advancements in medicine [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) projected that, by 2050, the world’s population aged 60 years and older is expected to total 2 billion, from 900 million in 2015 [2]. Taiwan is no exception to this trend and is currently experiencing it at an accelerated pace when compared to European countries and the United States [3]. Taiwan is facing challenges related to caring for its growing elderly population, especially on their health and well-being
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