Cambridge University iPad Game Could Help Schizophrenia Patients Improve Memory

A new brain-training iPad game could help to improve the memory of Schizophrenia sufferers.

Developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, the new app could help make it easier for Schizophrenia patients to live independent lives.

Schizophrenia is a long-term mental health condition that causes a range of psychological symptoms, ranging from changes in behaviour through to hallucinations and delusions.

Increasing evidence suggests that computer-assisted training can help sufferers overcome some of their symptoms, where drugs have so far proved ineffective.

The new iPad game - called Wizard - is the result of a nine-month collaboration between psychologists, neuroscientists, and the developer behind the brain-training app Peak.

It is designed to help improve episodic memory - the kind of memory people need to remember where they parked their car or where they left their keys.

The game features a memory task that is woven into a narrative in which the player is allowed to choose their own character and name. Players are rewarded for progress with additional in-game activities to provide them with a sense of progression, independent of the cognitive training process.

Participants in the study played the game for eight hours over a four-week trial period while control subjects carried on their usual treatment.

Researchers analysed the episodic memory, level of enjoyment and motivation of each of the participants at the end of the four-week period.

They found that the participants who had played Wizard made fewer errors and could recall different patterns more frequently that the control group.

Professor Peter Jones commented: “These are promising results and suggest that there may be the potential to use game apps to not only improve a patient’s episodic memory, but also their functioning in activities of daily living. We will need to carry out further studies with larger sample sizes to confirm the current findings, but we hope that, used in conjunction with medication and current psychological therapies, this could help people with schizophrenia minimise the impact of their illness on everyday life.”

A new episodic memory training module, based on the Wizard game, is now available within the iOS Peak app.

Image credit: Peak