‘Wizard’: iPad Game for Schizophrenics

"Wizard," a new gaming app developed for the iPad platform, "may improve the memory of patients with schizophrenia, helping them in their daily lives at work and living independently," touts the press release from the team of developers at Cambridge University. 

The game is aimed at improving "episodic memory," one of the aspects of cognitive function that schizophrenia typically affects, along with attention deficit, clouded judgment, hallucinations and delusions. Episodic memory is the long-term memory of events or "episodes" in one's own life.

Although some of the symptoms of schizophrenia can now be reasonably addressed with medication, sufferers often still tend to find their memory lapses and losses too debilitating to resume normal day-to-day functioning.

In recent years, it has been increasingly shown that computer-assisted training can help those with the mental condition learn how to better keep their memories of past events intact.

Now, in a new study published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, a team of Cambridge researchers led by Professor Barbara Sahakian describe how they developed and tested "Wizard," a tablet game resulting from their nine-month collaboration with psychologists, neuroscientists, a professional game-developer and people with schizophrenia. 

As Sahakan and her team describes it, "Wizard" is "intended to be fun, attention-grabbing, motivating and easy to understand, whilst at the same time improving the player's episodic memory.

The memory task was woven into a narrative in which the player was allowed to choose their own character and name; the game rewarded progress with additional in-game activities to provide the user with a sense of progression independent of the cognitive training process." 

Sahakian and her team found that those 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 when compared to those in the control group. They also showed an increase in their scores on the GAF scale. Finally, these participants reported enjoying the game and were motivated to continue playing across the eight hours of cognitive training.

Regarding the research outcome, Sahakian said "this proof-of-concept study is important because it demonstrates that the memory game can help where drugs have so far failed. Because the game is interesting, even those patients with a general lack of motivation are spurred on to continue the training." 

In April 2015, Sahakian and her colleagues began working with the team behind the popular brain training app "Peak" to produce scientifically-tested cognitive training modules based on their "Wizard" game.

The collaboration has resulted in the launch today of the "Cambridge University & Peak Advanced Training Plan," a memory game available within Peak's iOS apps for visual and episodic memory training and learning, coinciding with the publication of their study.