New Virtual-Reality Game Can Objectively Detect ADHD, Other Cognitive Conditions

Video games have been known to improve mental wellbeing, but this one is a level up—it not only engages the senses of players with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) but can also properly diagnose the condition.

For years, doctors have been identifying the neurodevelopmental disorder using questionnaires, observation, and interviews. Naturally, those evaluations tend to be more ambiguous. Now, though, researchers at Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, and Abo Akademi University have discovered that tracking the eye movements of children in video games, as well as utilizing machine learning, allows them to make quantifiable observations.

The team designed a virtual-reality game called EPELI (short for Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) with Topi Siro, a former Aalto researcher who now works at software company Peili Vision Oy, that’s intended to evaluate ADHD symptoms in children. The first version of the game was more of a diagnostic tool, but the researchers have since added eye tracking to identify eye movement patterns in line with the behavior of young patients with ADHD.

EPELI is an adorable game that simulates day-to-day life by getting players to complete simple tasks like brushing their teeth or eating a banana. Throughout each round, the characters are thrown into surroundings with distractions such as a television being switched on. The objective is to remember to fulfill their goals in spite of the mental obstacles.

To assess the game’s effectiveness in recognizing ADHD, the team invited 37 children diagnosed with the condition and 36 children without ADHD to play EPELI against a second game, Shoot the Target. The scientists monitored everything from how often a child clicked on the controls to their efficiency, which reflected how players would handle those same routines in real life.

They noted that the eyes of the children with ADHD lingered longer on objects in the background, and they tended to switch their gaze from one area to another more quickly. “This might indicate a delay in visual system development and poorer information processing than other children,” explains Liya Merzon, a doctoral researcher at Aalto University.

The project’s leader Juha Salmitaival, an Academy Research Fellow at Aalto, says that EPELI will be a winner for children with ADHD, who will be especially incentivized by the element of fun—a feature lacking in regular neuropsychological assessments. “We want to develop a gamification-based digital therapy that can help children with ADHD get excited about doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do,” Salmitaival elaborates.

The team now believes the game can be tweaked to be incorporated into ADHD treatment for both children and adults, as well as to look out for symptoms of autism, cerebral palsy, and age-related memory diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Currently, the game is only accessible by neuropsychologists working at the pediatric neurology and pediatric psychiatry units at Helsinki University Hospital.

[via ANI News / The Print, New Atlas, Science Daily, images via various sources]