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The PERSON project: a serious brain-computer interface game for treatment in cognitive impairment

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Abstract

The cognitive and computational neurosciences have developed neurorehabilitative tools able to treat suffering subjects from early symptoms, in order to give priority to a home environment. In this way, the curative treatment would not burden the hospital with excessive costs and the patient with psychological disorientation. Recent studies have shown the efficacy of video games on improving cognitive processes impaired by ageing’s physiological effect, neurodegenerative or other diseases, with potential beneficial effects. The PERvasive game for perSOnalized treatment of cognitive and functional deficits associated with chronic and Neurodegenerative diseases (PERSON) project proposed new tools for cognitive rehabilitation, aiming to improve the quality of life for patients with cognitive impairments, especially at early stages, by the use of sophisticated, non-invasive technology. This article is an overview of game solutions for training cognitive abilities and it presents the tools developed within the PERSON project. These tools are serious games based on virtual reality, connected to a brain-computer interface based on electroencephalography (EEG) and to haptic devices. The project was born thanks to a strategic synergy between research and public health, to implement a technology for personalized medicine that relies on the cloud infrastructure of the REte di CAlcolo per SuperB ed altre applicazioni (ReCaS)-Bari data centre. PERSON developed a completely open source and innovative framework to interface the game device with the computational resources in the cloud. We exploited the container technology and the Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm to implement a genetic algorithm that analyses the neural responses in EEG recordings. The paper focuses on technical aspects of the designed tools. A test was conducted on a few volunteers for the purpose of tuning the overall system. The paper does not contain results of a clinical trial as this is planned in a second testing phase, when the user’s perception of the system will also be tested.

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Acknowledgements

This paper has been partially supported by the Apulian regional technological cluster PERSON.

Funding

This paper has been partially supported by the Apulian regional technological cluster PERSON, project code LQ8FBY0.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Sezione di Bari, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Via A. Orabona 4, 70125, Bari, Italy

      Alfonso Monaco, Gianluca Sforza, Nicola Amoroso, Marica Antonacci, Roberto Bellotti, Domenico Diacono & Sabina Tangaro

    2. Dipartimento interateneo di Fisica “Michelangelo Merlin”, Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”, Via G. Amendola 173, 70126, Bari, Italy

      Nicola Amoroso & Roberto Bellotti

    3. Dipartimento di Scienze mediche di base, neuroscienze e organi di senso, Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”, Piazza G. Cesare, 11, Bari, Italy

      Marina de Tommaso, Eleonora Gentile & Anna Montemurno

    4. Grifo multimedia S.r.l., Via Bruno Zaccaro, 17/19, Bari, Italy

      Pierpaolo Di Bitonto & Antonio Ulloa

    5. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e dell’Informazione, Politecnico di Bari, Via A. Orabona 4, 70125, Bari, Italy

      Eugenio Di Sciascio & Michele Ruta

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    1. Alfonso Monaco
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    2. Gianluca Sforza
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    Correspondence to Alfonso Monaco.

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    This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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    The authors who contributed equally to this work are Alfonso Monaco and Gianluca Sforza, both first names of the paper.

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    Monaco, A., Sforza, G., Amoroso, N. et al. The PERSON project: a serious brain-computer interface game for treatment in cognitive impairment. Health Technol. 9, 123–133 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-018-0258-y

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