Dyslexia, Alzheimer’s disease: video games soon with a prescription?

A game to help children with dyslexia: this is the idea of ​​a French start-up, Mila Learn, which has developed a music video game of the same name. We speak here more of a “serious game” than a traditional video game: far from the usual Fortnite Where fifa, mila learn It is aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 11 who suffer from developmental disorders related to language, such as dysphasia, dyspraxia or dyslexia.

mila learn It is therefore a therapeutic game, with children’s and colorful graphics, based on adventure, rhythm and music. The objective: to work on concentration, memory and motor skills, to stimulate certain areas of the brain that are deficient in children suffering from these disorders.

“drug games”

The game can be accessed on smartphones and tablets, and game sessions are capped at 25 minutes, five days a week for eight weeks, to limit daily screen time. mila learn It is currently in the clinical trial phase, with just over a hundred children. If the results are conclusive, the start-up wants its game to be reimbursed by mutual insurance companies, or even by social security.

This is not the first “therapeutic game”: the game EndeavourRXapproved in 2020 by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) américaine, to pour objectif d’aider les enfants souffrant de trouble de l’attention et d’hyperactivité, en les amenant à gérer plusieurs tâches en même temps au sein du jeu, for example.

The video game giant Ubisoft, for its part, has designed a game dedicated to children suffering from amblyopia, a visual disability that makes one eye less functional than the other. So the weaker eye will have to focus on the characters in order to work.

games for seniors

And therapeutic games are not reserved only for children: several projects have also emerged aimed at detecting early symptoms of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

One of them, Sea Hero Quest, proposes to embody a ship captain who has to redraw routes at sea, for example. A mechanism that can detect the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

None of these games is intended to replace real treatment: it is just complementary support, to be combined with more traditional treatments.