Brain Training Game Helps Schizophrenics

Neuroscientists have developed a game based on scientific principles to help patients with schizophrenia perform tasks that rely on good memory

16:34 03 August 2015

Professor Barbara Sahakian of Cambridge University, the lead author of the study, said that people recovering from schizophrenia suffer serious lapses in episodic memory, preventing them from returning to work or studying at university.

 

“This kind of memory is essential for everyday learning and everything we do really both at home and at work. We have formulated an iPad game that could drive the neural circuitry behind episodic memory by stimulating the ability to remember where things were on the screen,” Professor Sahakian said.

 

Based on statistics, one in every hundred people in the UK suffer from schizophrenia, costing the NHS £2bn a year in treatment alone.

 

“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,” Professor Sahakian said.

 

“So 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,” she said.