Playing this smartphone game could help scientists spot the warning signs of dementia
Could a mobile app named Sea Hero Quest help scientists spot the warning signs of dementia? Scientists at University College London (UCL) believe it could – and they want you to take part in their study.
Researchers at UCL developed the game, in which users navigate a ship through "Arctic rivers and the glorious Golden Shores" in a fictional world, in order to "work towards finding a cure" for dementia.
The game, which was developed alongside Deutsche Telekom, the University of East Anglia and gaming company Glitchers, is designed to turbo-charge dementia research. According to the game's website, playing it for two minutes generates the same amount of data scientists would take five hours to collect in lab-based research.
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It includes three tasks: navigating mazes, shooting flares to test players' orientation, and chasing creatures to capture photos of them.
"From the penguins, to the mammoth hidden in the ice, every element of the game was carefully crafted to be as fun and exciting as it is scientifically valid."
So there you go.
Neuroscientist Dr Hugo Spiers and his team hope 100,000 people will download the game. The more people play, the more data is created which can be used by the team to study how people navigate space, UCL said.
Want to get involved? Download Sea Hero Quest here.