奇速英语

这款游戏能改善精神分裂症患者的情景记忆

A new brain training app developed to help improve the memory of people with schizophrenia(精神分裂症) could save taxpayers thousands of pounds, a study has claimed.

The computer game has been designed by neuroscientists at Cambridge University to help patients recover their ability to carry out everyday tasks that rely on having a good memory. Its aim is to train the brain in episodic memory(情景记忆), which helps people remember events such as where they parked their car in a multi-storey car park or where they left a set of keys. Researchers found that schizophrenia patients who played the game regularly for a month were four times better at remembering these kinds of things than non-players. The computer game is called Wizard and is aimed at people who suffer with poor episodic memory — one of the main side effects of schizophrenia drugs.

Researchers assigned 22 participants, who had been given a diagnosis(诊断) of schizophrenia, to either the cognitive training group or a control group at random. Participants in the training group played the memory game for a total of eight hours over a four-week period. Those in the control group continued their treatment as usual. Scientists found that the patients who had played the memory game made significantly fewer errors in memory testing.

Professor Barbara Sahakian of the Department of Psychiatry, said: “This study is important because it proves that the memory game can help where drugs have so far failed. The game is interesting, so even those patients with a general lack of motivation are encouraged to continue the training.”

Professor Peter Jones added: “These are promising results and suggest that there may be the potential to use game apps to not only improve a patient’s episodic memory, but also their functioning in activities of daily living. We will need to carry out further studies to confirm the current findings, but we hope that, used with medication and current psychological therapies, this could help people with schizophrenia reduce the impact of their illness on everyday life.”