Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

The Effects of Playing the “We are Family” Brain Games in People with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Feasibility Study

Ioulietta Lazarou^1*, Ioulietta Lazarou^1*, Margarita Grammatikopoulou¹, Lampros Mpaltadoros¹, Ioanna Provata², Thanos G. Stavropoulos¹, Spiros Nikolopoulos¹, Chrysostomos Bourlis³, Angelos Konstantinidis³, Voula Ganosi³, Ioannis Kompatsiaris¹ and Magda Tsolaki²

¹Information Technologies Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessalonik, Greece

²Greek Association of Alzheimer’s Disease, Thessaloniki, Greece

³ARX.net, Thessaloniki, Greece

Received Date: Feb 27, 2023 / Published Date: Mar 30, 2023

Citation: Lazarou I, Grammatikopoulou M, Mpaltadoros L, Provata I, Stavropoulos TG, et al. (2023) The Effects of Playing The “We are Family” Brain Games in People with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Feasibility Study. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 13: 565.DOI: 10.4172/2161-0460.100565.

Copyright: © 2023 Lazarou I, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Background: Brain games are increasingly gaining attention as a non-pharmacological intervention to promote well-being and quality of life in people with cognitive impairment.

Objective: Herein we present the “We Are Family” (WAF) seniors mobile application and a feasibility study to evaluate its impact on the emotions of people in the spectrum of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) ranging from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) to AD. WAF includes 10 modules each one assessing different cognitive functions, such as memory, complex thinking, sustained attention, and short-term memory.

Methods: The feasibility study aims to investigate whether the current WAF app brain games and design has an impact on emotions of people with MCI and mild AD. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) scale was used to evaluate the participants’ emotional state before and after interacting with the WAF brain games. Additionally, we have collected information with regards to the preferences of the end-users about the application through a constructive questionnaire and open-ended tailored questions.

Results: Our findings demonstrated acceptance of the WAF app, with the participants referring to their experience as positive. A small increase in their overall positive emotions for the MCI group was noted and significant decrease for the negative emotion “Afraid”.

Conclusion: These preliminary results show that people with MCI and mild AD experienced positive emotions while playing the WAF brain games, suggesting that people with cognitive impairment may benefit from using this type of software on a daily basis.

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