‘Kitchen and cooking,’ a serious game for mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease: a pilot study

Abstract

Recently there has been a growing interest in employing serious games (SGs) for the assessment and rehabilitation of elderly people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and related disorders. In the present study we examined the acceptability of ‘Kitchen and cooking’ – a SG developed in the context of the EU project VERVE (http://www.verveconsortium.eu/) – in these populations. In this game a cooking plot is employed to assess and stimulate executive functions (such as planning abilities) and praxis. The game is installed on a tablet, to be flexibly employed at home and in nursing homes. Twenty one elderly participants (9 MCI and 12 AD, including 14 outpatients and 7 patients living in nursing homes, as well as 11 apathetic and 10 non-apathetic) took part in a 1-month trail, including a clinical and neuropsychological assessment, and 4-week training where the participants were free to play as long as they wanted on a personal tablet. During the training, participants met once a week with a clinician in order to fill in self-report questionnaires assessing their overall game experience (including acceptability, motivation, and perceived emotions). The results of the self reports and of the data concerning game performance (e.g., time spent playing, number of errors, etc) confirm the overall acceptability of Kitchen and cooking for both patients with MCI and patients with AD and related disorders, and the utility to employ it for training purposes. Interestingly, the results confirm that the game is adapted also to apathetic patients.

Jogos Eletrônicos como Instrumentos de Intervenção no Declínio Cognitivo – Uma Revisão Sistemática

“…Os treinamentos realizados variaram de duas a 24 semanas de duração com um total de uma a 60 sessões. Em um dos estudos não foi localizado o delineamento referente ao número e duração das sessões na semana (Manera et al, 2015). Com relação aos jogos utilizados, dos doze estudos, oito utilizaram jogos da categoria JTC, três da categoria JDE e um comparou os efeitos de jogos de ambas as categorias (Zimermann et al, 2014).…”

“…Dentro dos transtornos neurocognitivos, observou-se que os aprimoramentos foram superiores nos idosos acometidos por DCL, seguido pela demência e por fim, os menores níveis de aprimoramento foram observados em idosos nos estágios inicias de DA (Bamidis et al, 2015;Manera et al, 2015). Contudo, embora estes aprimoramentos sejam encontrados em menores proporções, devido à gravidade da patologia instaurada, eles foram superiores a outras formas de intervenções as quais não utilizaram jogos eletrônicos (Bamidis et al, 2015;Fernandez-Calvo et al, 2011).…”

“…Contudo, outros três estudos apontam que as habilidades desenvolvidas por meio da exposição aos jogos eletrônicos podem ser transferidas para o cotidiano de idosos acometidos por DP (Mendes et al, 2012;Pompeu et al, 2012), DCL e DA (Manera et al, 2015). Outro artigo que utilizou um jogo eletrônico similar (Wii Sports) ao utilizado (Wii Fit) por Mendes et al, (2012) e Pompeu et al, (2012) como instrumento de intervenção, conduz uma discussão sobre este tópico, concluindo que existem opiniões divergentes na literatura, porém, os autores não realizaram uma avaliação para constar se as habilidades adquiridas por meio dos jogos eletrônicos foram transferidas para o cotidiano (Zimermann et al, 2014).…”

Recommendations for the Use of ICT in Elderly Populations with Affective Disorders

“…Results from recent studies have shown that several stimulation-oriented ICT could likely improve affective affects, such as using serious games on tablet showing interest for apathetic individuals (Manera et al, 2015) or exergame showing increased positive emotions and interest (Ben-Sadoun et al, 2016). In various medical situations, the use of commercial video games for rehabilitation showed similar results compared to conventional rehabilitation methods but increased patients’ motivation (Bonnechère et al, 2016).…”

Using game authoring platforms to develop screen-based simulated functional assessments in persons with executive dysfunction following traumatic brain injury

“…The applications of serious games have been restricted to rehabilitation for enhancing cognitive and physical function in different disorders with EDF, such as Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment [91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99] and treatment of mental health disorders [100].…”