Research and Development of a Bingo Game Using Dice to Prevent Dementia

Abstract

Recent years, the number of patients with dementia is on the rise. Dementia is a disease where the brain cells can’t function normally for various reasons. The onset of it causes damage to memory and judgment, which makes it difficult for people to live their daily lives. But dementia can be prevented by taking measures. It is considered to be effective to do brain training, exercise and communication, to prevent dementia. The proposed system is an interactive bingo game that requires the use of dices. The main target of this system is the elderly population which contains the most cases of dementia patients. The aim of this game is to get a bingo faster than your opponent while matching the numbers displayed on the screen with help of simple mathematical combinations using blocks with numbers. This is an effective measure against dementia, exercising the brain and body using calculation, coordination moving big dices and communication through a competition. Before full scale implementation, we created the protype using blocks of 103 cm3. And displayed this protype at two facilities to check the concept of this system. Everybody could easily experience because it is easy to understand how to exchange numbers by moving blocks with numbers and making simple equations. When the participants blocked their opponent’s bingo or conversely or when their own bingo was blocked, they communicated actively with smiles. As a conclusion, we have assumed that this system played a good role in brain training and communication.