Dementia games: A literature review of dementia-related serious games

Abstract

Serious games find wide application in the health domain, occupying their own place in the video game industry (games for health). Currently, there is a proliferation of cognitive training, exercise and social games, targeting one of the most dangerous disease of the era: dementia, as well as its various symptoms and stages like Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the dementia-related gaming field is still uncharted. In this literature review, we list studies on serious games related to dementia, that are supported by evaluation tests on dementia, MCI and AD patients with published, peer-reviewed results. This review discusses the effects that games, which include Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Big Brain Academy, Lumosity, SmartBrain Games, MasterQuiz, MINDs et al., have on dementia-related conditions. The review leads us to the conclusions that, firstly, even though many games were developed for entertainment purposes, they are being used for health reasons (usually after technical or conceptual modification), acquiring the characteristics of serious games and, secondly, dementia games do have an effect on cognitive impaired people. If that effect is longlasting and/or transferable to the daily activities is a matter of further scientific investigation. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.