UMass Amherst researcher receives NIH grant to measure effects of mobile gaming
A biomedical computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will use a $436,836 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore the use of “serious games” played independently on computer tablets to improve brain function in people elderly with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
Sunghoon Ivan Lee, an assistant professor in the College of Information and Computing Sciences, aims to develop a human-centered platform that can motivate patients to stick to a therapeutic mobile gaming regimen at home by themselves. Neuro-World, a collection of six games developed by Lee’s industry partner in South Korea, Woorisoft, is designed to stimulate working or short-term memory and selective attention.
People with MCI experience cognitive decline beyond what is expected of normal aging, but not severe enough to significantly interfere with their daily activities. “There aren’t many solutions for boosting the cognitive abilities of people with dementia, especially at home, outside of clinical settings,” says Lee, whose research focuses on designing and implementing implement mobile health (mHealth) technologies that meet the practical needs of people with motor or cognitive impairments.
The goals of therapeutic treatments for MCI are to slow disease progression and reduce the impact of symptoms, preferably with non-pharmacological interventions such as serious games, as they are inexpensive, non-invasive, safe, and without side effects. unwanted.
Lee’s work addresses a major challenge of serious games in healthcare: developing a system that does not require substantial involvement of trained caregivers and clinicians to supervise and motivate patients to follow game protocol. Lee was presented to Neuro-World by Hee-Tae Jung, a former post-doctoral researcher whom Lee had supervised at UMass Amherst. “I was intrigued by the Neuro-World concept and the science behind it,” says Lee.
In a small pilot study with stroke survivors to validate the effectiveness of the system, Lee, Jung and colleagues found that Neuro-World games were able to not only improve patients’ cognitive function, but also predict the expected improvement, based on an analysis of their game performance.
“We hope that knowing how to play games can improve their cognitive function may further motivate patients to play more games,” Lee says.
With NIH funding, researchers from UMass Amherst, Université de Montréal and Rutgers will conduct a study of 50 people diagnosed with MCI. Half will be asked to play video games for 30 minutes twice a week for 12 weeks. The other half will not play Neuro-World games. Both groups will also receive conventional therapy.
In addition to assessing the game’s ability to improve cognitive function, the researchers also aim to develop machine learning-based algorithms to predict cognitive function from game performance. Finally, Lee and colleagues will conduct interviews in-depth with participants to understand their experiences with the games. They will use this information to optimize the design of the system to maximize patient participation in game-based training.
“We thought people with MCI would be the population that could really benefit from serious games – before they slide into a more serious disease like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease,” says Lee.
He hopes the study will advance research and expand options for effective, safe and inexpensive mHealth therapies for people with cognitive impairment.
“We believe that the results of this project will open a new door leading to previously unexplored datasets and understanding of patient-technology interactions to promote positive behavioral changes to enable self-administered cognitive training based on serious games,” says Lee. “And this can form the basis for a wide range of future investigations into the rehabilitation of hemiparesis and the personalized management of the disease.”
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