Tablet-Based Puzzle Game Intervention for Cognitive Function and Well-Being in Healthy Adults: Pilot Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Promoting cognitive health is key to maintaining cognitive and everyday functions and preventing the risk of cognitive impairment or dementia. Existing scientific evidence shows the benefits of various training modalities on cognition. One way to promote cognitive health is through engagement in cognitive activities (eg, board and video games).

The role of dyadic cognitive report and subjective cognitive decline in early ADRD clinical research and trials: Current knowledge, gaps, and recommendations.

Efficient identification of cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk in early stages of the AD disease continuum is a critical unmet need. Subjective cognitive decline is increasingly recognized as an early symptomatic stage of AD. Dyadic cognitive report, including subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) from a participant and an informant/study partner who knows the participant well, represents an accurate, reliable, and efficient source of data for assessing risk.

A systems approach towards remote health-monitoring in older adults: Introducing a zero-interaction digital exhaust.

Using connected sensing devices to remotely monitor health is a promising way to help transition healthcare from a rather reactive to a more precision medicine oriented proactive approach, which could be particularly relevant in the face of rapid population ageing and the challenges it poses to healthcare systems. Sensor derived digital measures of health, such as digital biomarkers or digital clinical outcome assessments, may be used to monitor health status or the risk of adverse events like falls. Current research around such digital measures has largely focused on exploring the use of few individual measures obtained through mobile devices.

Clinical outcome measures in dementia with Lewy bodies trials: critique and recommendations.

The selection of appropriate outcome measures is fundamental to the design of any successful clinical trial. Although dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is one of the most common neurodegenerative conditions, assessment of therapeutic benefit in clinical trials often relies on tools developed for other conditions, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. These may not be sufficiently valid or sensitive to treatment changes in DLB, decreasing their utility.

Wearable Based Calibration of Contactless In-home Motion Sensors for Physical Activity Monitoring in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

Passive infrared motion sensors are commonly used in telemonitoring applications to monitor older community-dwelling adults at risk. One possible use case is quantification of in-home physical activity, a key factor and potential digital biomarker for healthy and independent aging. A major disadvantage of passive infrared sensors is their lack of performance and comparability in physical activity quantification.

A Sensor-Driven Visit Detection System in Older Adults' Homes: Towards Digital Late-Life Depression Marker Extraction.

Modern sensor technology is increasingly used in older adults to not only provide additional safety but also to monitor health status, often by means of sensor derived digital measures or biomarkers. Social isolation is a known risk factor for late-life depression, and a potential component of social-isolation is the lack of home visits. Therefore, home visits may serve as a digital measure for social isolation and late-life depression.

Face Perception and Pareidolia Production in Patients With Parkinson's Disease.

In Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, visual misperceptions are a major problem within the non-motor symptoms. Pareidolia, i.e.

Cognition, hallucination severity and hallucination-specific insight in neurodegenerative disorders and eye disease.

Hallucinations occur across neurodegenerative disorders, with increasing severity, poorer cognition and impaired hallucination-specific insight associated with worse outcomes and faster disease progression. It remains unclear how changes in cognition, temporal aspects of hallucinations, hallucination-specific insight and distress relate to each other. Extant samples of patients experiencing visual hallucinations were included in the analyses: Parkinson's Disease ( = 103), Parkinson's Disease Dementia ( = 41), Dementia with Lewy Bodies ( = 27) and Eye Disease ( = 113).

Development of a Search Task Using Immersive Virtual Reality: Proof-of-Concept Study.

Background: Serious games are gaining increasing importance in neurorehabilitation since they increase motivation and adherence to therapy, thereby potentially improving its outcome. The benefits of serious games, such as the possibility to implement adaptive feedback and the calculation of comparable performance measures, can be even further improved by using immersive virtual reality (iVR), allowing a more intuitive interaction with training devices and higher ecological validity.

Objective: This study aimed to develop a visual search task embedded in a serious game setting for iVR, including self-adapting difficulty scaling, thus being able to adjust to the needs and ability levels of different groups of individuals.

Contactless Sleep Monitoring for Early Detection of Health Deteriorations in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Exploratory Study.

Background: Population aging is posing multiple social and economic challenges to society. One such challenge is the social and economic burden related to increased health care expenditure caused by early institutionalizations. The use of modern pervasive computing technology makes it possible to continuously monitor the health status of community-dwelling older adults at home.

Application of Eye Tracking in Puzzle Games for Adjunct Cognitive Markers: Pilot Observational Study in Older Adults.

Background: Recent studies suggest that computerized puzzle games are enjoyable, easy to play, and engage attentional, visuospatial, and executive functions. They may help mediate impairments seen in cognitive decline in addition to being an assessment tool. Eye tracking provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of gaze, which is highly useful in understanding visual search behavior.

Case Report: Ambient Sensor Signals as Digital Biomarkers for Early Signs of Heart Failure Decompensation.

Home monitoring systems are increasingly used to monitor seniors in their apartments for detection of emergency situations. More recently, multimodal ambient sensor systems are also used to monitor digital biomarkers to detect clinically relevant health problems over longer time periods. Clinical signs of HF decompensation including increase of heart rate and respiration rate, decreased physical activity, reduced gait speed, increasing toilet use at night and deterioration of sleep quality have a great potential to be detected by non-intrusive contactless ambient sensor systems and negative changes of these parameters may be used to prevent further deterioration and hospitalization for HF decompensation.

Exploring Bottom-Up Visual Processing and Visual Hallucinations in Parkinson's Disease With Dementia.

Visual hallucinations (VH) are a common symptom of Parkinson's disease with dementia (PDD), affecting up to 65% of cases. Integrative models of their etiology posit that a decline in executive control of the visuo-perceptual system is a primary mechanism of VH generation. The role of bottom-up processing in the manifestation of VH in this condition is still not clear although visual evoked potential (VEP) differences have been associated with VH at an earlier stage of PD.

Investigating a new tablet-based telerehabilitation app in patients with aphasia: a randomised, controlled, evaluator-blinded, multicentre trial protocol.

Introduction: Aphasia is a common language disorder acquired after stroke that reduces the quality of life of affected patients. The impairment is frequently accompanied by a deficit in cognitive functions. The state-of-the-art therapy is speech and language therapy but recent findings highlight positive effects of high-frequency therapy.

Isometric Strength Measures are Superior to the Timed Up and Go Test for Fall Prediction in Older Adults: Results from a Prospective Cohort Study.

Background: Isometric strength measures and timed up and go (TUG) tests are both recognized as valuable tools for fall prediction in older adults. However, results from direct comparison of these two tests are lacking. We aimed to assess the potential of isometric strength measures and the different modalities of the TUG test to detect individuals at risk of falling.

A Review of Multimodal Hallucinations: Categorization, Assessment, Theoretical Perspectives, and Clinical Recommendations.

Hallucinations can occur in different sensory modalities, both simultaneously and serially in time. They have typically been studied in clinical populations as phenomena occurring in a single sensory modality. Hallucinatory experiences occurring in multiple sensory systems-multimodal hallucinations (MMHs)-are more prevalent than previously thought and may have greater adverse impact than unimodal ones, but they remain relatively underresearched.

Potential of Ambient Sensor Systems for Early Detection of Health Problems in Older Adults.

Home monitoring sensor systems are increasingly used to monitor seniors in their apartments for detection of emergency situations. The aim of this study was to deliver a proof-of-concept for the use of multimodal sensor systems with pervasive computing technology for the detection of clinically relevant health problems over longer time periods. Data were collected with a longitudinal home monitoring study in Switzerland (StrongAge Cohort Study) in a cohort of 24 old and oldest-old, community-dwelling adults over a period of 1 to 2 years.

Development and Evaluation of Maze-Like Puzzle Games to Assess Cognitive and Motor Function in Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases.

There is currently a need for engaging, user-friendly, and repeatable tasks for assessment of cognitive and motor function in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. This study evaluated the feasibility of a maze-like Numberlink puzzle game in assessing differences in game-based measures of cognition and motor function due to age and neurodegenerative diseases. Fifty-five participants, including young (18-31 years, = 18), older (64-79 years, = 14), and oldest adults (86-98 years, = 14), and patients with Parkinson's (59-76 years, = 4) and Huntington's disease (HD; 35-66 years, = 5) played different difficulty levels of the Numberlink puzzle game and completed usability questionnaires and tests for psychomotor, attentional, visuospatial, and constructional and executive function.

Visual hallucinations in neurological and ophthalmological disease: pathophysiology and management.

Visual hallucinations are common in older people and are especially associated with ophthalmological and neurological disorders, including dementia and Parkinson's disease. Uncertainties remain whether there is a single underlying mechanism for visual hallucinations or they have different disease-dependent causes. However, irrespective of mechanism, visual hallucinations are difficult to treat.

Long-Term Home-Monitoring Sensor Technology in Patients with Parkinson's Disease-Acceptance and Adherence.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by a highly individual disease-profile as well as fluctuating symptoms. Consequently, 24-h home monitoring in a real-world environment would be an ideal solution for precise symptom diagnostics. In recent years, small lightweight sensors which have assisted in objective, reliable analysis of motor symptoms have attracted a lot of attention.

Validity of pervasive computing based continuous physical activity assessment in community-dwelling old and oldest-old.

In older adults, physical activity is crucial for healthy aging and associated with numerous health indicators and outcomes. Regular assessments of physical activity can help detect early health-related changes and manage physical activity targeted interventions. The quantification of physical activity, however, is difficult as commonly used self-reported measures are biased and rather unprecise point in time measurements.

Search and Match Task: Development of a Taskified Match-3 Puzzle Game to Assess and Practice Visual Search.

Background: Visual search declines with aging, dementia, and brain injury and is linked to limitations in everyday activities. Recent studies suggest that visual search can be improved with practice using computerized visual search tasks and puzzle video games. For practical use, it is important that visual search ability can be assessed and practiced in a controlled and adaptive way.