Surpassing entertainment with computer games: Online tools for early warnings of mild cognitive impairment

Abstract

Due to population aging, old age cognitive deficit is becoming a massphenomenon. Dementia, its most severe variant, is chronic, progressive, long lasting and, so far, incurable. The early sign of a higher risk for a pathological decrease in cognition is called Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Early detection of MCI is crucial for providing cost-effective care, and slowing down the deterioration. As clinical tests are infrequent and expensive, tests applicable for regular home monitoring have to be developed. In this paper, regular but voluntary use of computer games is proposed for measuring mental changes in an entertaining way. Basic considerations, challenges, proposed architectures, potential solutions based on virtual sensor fusion and statistical comparison of reference and test data sets, presentation of results, and proofs of the concept are described in the paper. The work was performed in the Maintaining and Measuring Mental Wellness (M3W) project supported by the AAL Joint Programme.