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.

Cognitive decline is one of the primary concerns in the elderly population. Serious games have been used for different purposes related to elderly care, such as physical therapy, cognitive training and mood management. There has been scientific evidence regarding the relationship between cognition and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) through heart rate variability (HRV). This paper explores the changes in the ANS among elderly people of normal and impaired cognition through measured HRV. Forty-eight subjects were classified into two groups: normal cognition (NC) (n = 24) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 24). The subjects went through the following experiment flow: rest for 3 min (Rest 1), play a cognitive aptitude game (Game 1), rest for another 3 min (Rest 2), then play two reaction-time games (Game 2&3). Ten HRV features were extracted from measured electrocardiography (ECG) signals. Based on statistical analysis, there was no significant difference on the HRV between the two groups, but the experiment sessions do have a significant effect. There was no significant interaction between sessions and cognitive status. This implies that the HRV between the two groups have no significant difference, and they will experience similar changes in their HRV regardless of their cognitive status. Based on the game performance, there was a significant difference between the two groups of elderly people. Tree-based pipeline optimization tool (TPOT) was used for generating a machine learning pipeline for classification. Classification accuracy of 68.75% was achieved using HRV features, but higher accuracies of 83.33% and 81.20% were achieved using game performance or both HRV and game performance features, respectively. These results show that HRV has the potential to be used for detection of mild cognition impairment, but game performance can yield better accuracy. Thus, serious games have the potential to be used for assessing cognitive decline among the elderly.

 Abstract-A sigma-delta third order dual truncation MASH 2-1 D/A converter with 18-bit input format is successfully implemented in 90nm CMOS technology. This design focuses on the digital implementation of 64x upsampling digital interpolator and third-order delta-sigma MASH architecture. The interpolator is digitally designed by two cascading halfband FIR lowpass filter and the final stage is designed using CIC (Cascaded Integrator-Comb) filter. The third-order delta-sigma MASH modulator is implemented into two parts; these are digital part and analog part. The digital part is successfully implemented using RTL code while the analog part is thru MATLAB for behavioral and Cdesigner for actual implementation. The total area for the digital block is 30339.259853 µm 2 while the total cell area is 25918.75 µm 2 using the TSMC 0.13µm Logic CMOS Technology. Furthermore, the total dynamic power of the circuit (modulator and interpolator) while in operation is 11.1799 µW. With the 3 rd -order dual truncation multistage noise shaping technology, SFDR of 110dB and SNR of 115 dB is achieved and its measured harmonics are all below -100dB. The total harmonic distortion of the whole analog block which has a chip area of 681um by 365um is 173m% and with a total power dissipation of 688.279uW.