Neurocognitive stimulation game: Serious game for neurocognitive stimulation and assessment

Abstract

The ageing process is naturally accompanied by changes in people’s cognitive processes. The European population ageing is a challenge for the European social policy and for the mental health professionals. New technologies can play an important role in the neurocognitive stimulation area as they possess characteristics that might reduce the anxiety levels of patients participating in neurocognitive stimulation or assessment programs. In particular, serious games provide a setting that can be explored to improve the easy access to neurocognitive stimulation and assessment, regardless of place and time, at a lower cost then traditional approaches. This paper presents a serious game aiming to analyse neurocognitive deficits and stimulate the players’ deficitary neurocognitive processes. This game is built on top of sound neurocognitive psychotherapy for adults, mainly addressing the cognitive processes of attention and memory. The game will simulate real world scenarios, allowing a better generalization process due to ecological validity.