(Photo : Image courtesy of Glitchers.com) Screenshot: Glitcher/Sea Hero Quest

The strongest signs of Alzheimer's disease are memory problems although they are said to be late-stage signs. The earliest sign of the disease is poor spatial orientation - which researchers are now narrowing in on to determine who may be at risk by asking people to play a video game.

Sea Hero Quest is a new video game that has been created and developed by Germany's Deutsche Telkom in partnerships with game studio Glitchers and a number of European Universities. The video game is designed to easily identify people who might have mild and early symptoms of dementia which are usually not easy to detect through conventional medical tests.

Most people usually fret when Alzheimer's disease is mentioned owing to its serious implications of ruining a patient's memory. Although memory problems are common symptoms of the disease, they are always late-stage symptoms. Researchers and doctors have been actively working on ways they could use to catch the disease in its earliest tracks possibly even before memory loss occurs so as to give future treatments the best opportunity of working.

Sea Hero Quest is a game that was purposely built to help identify people who may be at risk of Alzheimer's but are not yet already suffering from any of the major symptoms of the disease. According to a study that was just recently published in the journal PNAS, the game is quite effective at helping in detecting the condition early.

Sea Hero Quest is a VR game in which players are asked to navigate and control a virtual boat. In the interface, there is a map and checkpoints, the map is then taken away and players are required to navigate to the checkpoints minus the map.

Researchers are now comparing two minutes spent playing the game to be equal to at least five hours of research that is conducted in the lab. With all these impressive findings, researchers are optimistic that game will help them be able to identify people who are more likely to develop dementia later on in life and work to avert any serious effects that the condition causes to people. Dementia is a degenerative disease that usually causes very serious effects to people who are discovered to have it at a later stage. Now this game is promising to help make the diagnosis of the disease much earlier something that will help many patients in the long run.