Tablet games may help assess thinking and memory problems in Parkinson’s
SmartMe&You performance also correlated strongly with MMSE scores
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- SmartMe&You tablet game performance reflected cognitive problems in people with Parkinson’s.
- The tablet-based games showed potential for reliable, unsupervised cognitive assessment at home.
- Game performance was associated with brain-wave patterns linked to cognitive function.
A tablet-based set of video games called SmartMe&You reflected cognitive status in people with Parkinson’s-related mild cognitive impairment or mild-to-moderate dementia, a new study found.
“These video games have the potential to serve as a reliable, unsupervised digital home telemonitoring cognitive battery for periodic assessment of cognitive status in patients with [Parkinson’s-related cognitive problems], supporting monitoring at planned follow-ups every 6–12 months throughout the disease course,” the researchers said.
The study, “Performance of the SmartMe&You serious video games for home telemonitoring is related to cognitive status and resting-state electroencephalographic markers in healthy and Parkinson’s disease participants,” was published in GeroScience.
Tablet games put cognitive skills to the test
In addition to motor symptoms, Parkinson’s can also cause problems with thinking and memory. Clinicians can assess these difficulties using tests such as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), which asks patients to complete a series of structured questions and tasks.
With the wider use of tablets and other personal devices, researchers have begun exploring whether specially designed video games could supplement clinician-administered cognitive assessments. Such tools could make testing more convenient and allow patients to complete some assessments more independently at home.
To that end, scientists developed SmartMe&You, a set of seven tablet-based video games that takes about 20 minutes to complete. The games aim to be engaging while measuring accuracy, reaction time, and thinking skills such as attention, memory and understanding where objects are in space. The games were designed “to provide a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive status in older participants at risk of or with cognitive deficits over serial follow-ups, covering working memory, episodic memory, visuospatial skills, and visuomotor transformations, which are closely linked to vigilance, attention, and executive functions,” the researchers wrote.
To test the feasibility of SmartMe&You, 34 cognitively healthy older adults and 68 people with Parkinson’s-related cognitive problems played the games. The researchers noted that all of the healthy participants and 90% of the Parkinson’s patients were able to play them without direct supervision from a clinician, although caregivers could provide basic technical help.
The researchers found that SmartMe&You scores were generally better in healthy participants than in Parkinson’s patients, as expected because the Parkinson’s group had been recruited with diagnosed cognitive problems. In statistical analyses, game performance distinguished healthy participants from Parkinson’s patients with more than 90% accuracy.
SmartMe&You scores also correlated strongly with MMSE scores, suggesting that performance on the video games meaningfully reflects a patient’s overall cognitive status and could serve as a valuable tool for remote cognitive monitoring.
“These new findings suggest that SmartMe&You’s video games can be used to detect cognitive deficits in patients with [mild cognitive problems] and in most patients with mild-to-moderate dementia due to [Parkinson’s],” the researchers concluded.
Brain-wave patterns linked to game performance
In addition to playing the SmartMe&You games, participants underwent resting-state eyes-closed electroencephalography (rsEEG), which measures the brain’s electrical activity while a person rests with their eyes closed. Across all participants, poorer game performance was significantly associated with higher overall levels of slow brain waves, specifically delta and theta rhythms.
“These [brain rhythm] abnormalities may directly impair neural processes required for successful performance on the SmartMe&You video games, which demand sustained attention, visuospatial processing, and executive control,” the researchers said. The findings suggest that SmartMe&You may not only provide insight into patients’ cognitive status, but also help scientists study brain-activity changes associated with cognitive problems in Parkinson’s.
“Overall, the SmartMe&You serious video games may represent a useful, practical, free, ‘green’, and unsupervised digital tool for assessing cognitive status in patients with [Parkinson’s-related cognitive problems],” the researchers concluded. Because the study assessed participants at only one point in time, the researchers said further research is needed to determine whether the games can track cognitive changes over the long term.
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