Serious mini‐games for cognitive function assessment

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundThe presence of neurocognitive disorders (NCD) must be detected at an early stage of the disease progression and monitored by clinicians overtime, in order to provide early individualized interventions. Today, a reliable diagnosis requires a heavy set of neuropsychological tests, often coupled with biomarker evidence. There is growing interest in finding objective, fast to administer, and reliable behavioral markers that could complement classical clinical assessment and help detecting early changes in cognitive performance. Serious games have been proposed as promising tools to screen cognitive deficits in people with NCD [1]. In this study, we investigated the interest of employing a battery of mini‐games developed by CoBTeK lab to distinguish elderly patients with mild NCD from patients without cognitive decline.MethodsIn the context of an ongoing project, we recruited 20 subjects with mild NCD (14 females; age: M=75.5, SD=5.7; MMSE, M=26.1; SD=2.2) and 10 subjects with subjective cognitive decline ‐ SCD (9 females; age: M=71.0, SD=7.6; MMSE, M=29.2, SD=1.2) at the Nice Memory Center. Participants played four mini‐games on a tablet, each game assessing a different cognitive function: selective and sustained attention, episodic memory, inhibitory control, and sensitivity to reward. We collected different data including scores, responses, response times, and videos (focused on hand gestures).ResultsPreliminary data analysis focused on one mini‐game (assessing sensitivity to reward) suggests that participants with mild NCD had an almost significantly lower sensitivity to reward. Once the data analysis is complete for the 4 mini‐games, and the final sample size of 50 participants is reached (by the end of June 2021), we plan to integrate all the collected data into a predictive behavior model compliant with model checking techniques.ConclusionsConverging with previous findings, these very preliminary results suggest that mini‐games could be interesting to differentiate patients with mild NCD from subjects without cognitive impairment. Predictive behavior model based on mini‐games may in the next future help clinicians identify individuals that meet the profile of NCD. Reference: Robert P et al. (2014) Recommendations for the use of Serious Games in people with Alzheimer’s Disease, related disorders and frailty. Front Aging Neurosci. 6:54. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2014.00054