Just a few minutes of playing a certain video game could help identify the earliest stages of Alzheimer's in ways existing medical tests can't, researchers have found.
A new study used a smartphone app called
Sea Hero Quest to monitor how gamers with and without a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's navigate the virtual world, using their thumbs to move a little boat through a series of maritime mazes.
This type of test was key because "spatial navigation is emerging as a critical factor in identifying preclinical Alzheimer's disease," authors of the study, just published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said.
Players with a high genetic risk for Alzheimer's took less efficient routes to reach checkpoints in the game, researchers found. What's more, the movement patterns were identified among players in the genetic risk pool who had not yet displayed any other memory problems, they said.
