A complete of 22 members with schizophrenia have been randomly assigned to both proceed their regular remedy or to a cognitive coaching group that may play Wizard for eight hours over the course of four weeks.
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The researchers now wish to roll out a new series of experiments involving a larger group of volunteers and try to determine whether the game does, in fact, improve episodic memory in schizophrenia patients enough to actually benefit their day-to-day life.
Wizard, which was designed with input from patients and game designers, tasks player with entering rooms, finding items in boxes and then recalling where the items were placed.
The app aims to improve the episodic memory of schizophrenia patients, described by the researchers as the type of memory we rely on to remember details like where we left our keys or where we parked our auto.
People with schizophrenia may experience cognitive impairments, including poor episodic memory, which affects remembering things such as times and dates, and understanding context.
There are no current drug treatments licensed to help improve cognitive functions of schizophrenia patients, but more and more evidence suggest that training and rehabilitation through computer-assisted programs can provide sufferers with the means to overcome some of the condition’s debilitating symptoms and allow them to regain some daily functions.
The researchers found that the patients who had played the memory game made significantly fewer errors and needed significantly fewer attempts to remember the location of different patterns in the CANTAB PAL test relative to the control group.
Using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) PAL, the researchers tested the episodic memory of all of the study participants as well as their motivation and enjoyment level after the four week duration.
“We need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory, but slow progress is being made towards developing a drug treatment”, said lead author Dr. Barbara Sahakian, a professor of psychiatry at Cambridge University, in a statement .
She added that the memory game could help where drugs had so far failed – with no side-effects.
Participants in the cognitive training group indicated that they enjoyed the game and were motivated to continue playing across the eight hours of cognitive training. In addition, patients in the cognitive training group saw an increase in their score on the GAF scale.
While they are unsure precisely how using the app improved the participant’s functioning, the researchers believe that improvements in episodic memory could be the cause. They also tested the patients’ score based on the scale of the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) to measure psychological, social and occupational capabilities as adults.
In the meantime, the Wizard game will live on as a training module of Peak, a “personalized self-improvement app” now available on any iOS platform that helps people enhance their memory, attention, problem-solving and language skills.
“This new app will allow the Wizard memory game to become widely available, inexpensively”.
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The game is built for four weeks of training and is priced at $14.99 / £10.99.
