UCL undertakes world’s largest dementia research experiment

University College London has published its findings of the world’s largest dementia research experiment, which takes the form of a video game, and shows the decline in navigational skills as one of the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings were presented at the Neuroscience 2016 conference, and displayed data from 2.4 million people who downloaded the game. It is hoped the results can be used to help create a dementia test.

The video game, named Sea Hero Quest, is a nautical adventure to save an old sailor's lost memories. Players sail a boat round desert islands and icy oceans, while the game anonymously records the player's sense of direction and navigational ability.

The data suggested that the sense of direction declines consistently after the teenage years.

It found players aged 19 were 74 per cent accurate at firing the flare back home, but accuracy fell year by year until it reached 46 per cent at age 75.

In an interview with the BBC, Dr Hugo Spiers commented: "What we're able to announce to the world is it does decline across the lifespan, the ability to shoot the flare back to the target - that sense of direction."

"The value of a future test built from Sea Hero Quest is that we will be able to provide a diagnostic for Alzheimer's dementia and a tool that allows us to monitor performance in drug trials."

Hilary Evans, the chief executive of Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "Sadly, we hear all too frequently of people getting lost and being found miles away from home.

"Researchers believe that these problems with spatial navigation could form the basis of a diagnostic test for the early stages of diseases like Alzheimer's, which could add a valuable tool to a clinician's diagnostic armoury.

"For any new diagnostic tool to be effective, it must take into account natural variation in a particular skill or ability across the population."