Navigating Dementia

Researchers at UCL are casting a new light on dementia through a mobile phone game with 2.7 million players

Sailboats, icebergs and old maps may not immediately spring to mind when you think of dementia research, but they’re being used by scientists at UCL in the form of a game, to better understand human navigational skills and in turn, the onset of dementia.

Sea Hero Quest (SHQ) is a mobile gaming app that records users’ sense of direction to determine how navigational skills decline with age. Researchers from UCL and the University of East Anglia will use this data to create the world’s largest benchmark of how humans navigate, which will then go on to become a critical diagnostic tool for dementia in the future.