Norfolk is at the cutting edge of dementia research

Home to the University of East Anglia and Norwich Research Park, Norfolk is internationally renowned as a centre for scientific research.

And one area in which researchers are at the cutting edge is dementia. Their findings are helping to shape understanding of the multi-faceted condition and improve the quality of life with those living with it.

The results of two recent studies show just how wide ranging their research is.

UEA researcher Prof Michael Hornberger has been working with telecommunication company Deutsche Telekom to launch a mobile game designed to help advance understanding of spatial navigation and how the brain works and ultimately develop new diagnostic tests for dementia.

And other recent UEA research, funded by the National Institute for Health Reasearch (NIHR), showed that eating together, providing social support and interaction during meals has the potential to help people with dementia avoid dehydration.

Dementia disrupts the formation of new memories, often leaving those affected isolated and disorientated. For many people living with dementia, one of the first effects they experience is a loss of spatial awareness, as they lose the ability to navigate their way through even well-known places and environments.

Prof Hornberger, a professor of applied dementia research, was involved in the development of Sea Hero Quest, an app designed to provide insights into the way people navigate every day.

It was created in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, Alzheimer's Research, University College London and game developers Glitcher in a process led by Saatchi and Saatchi London.

As players make their way through mazes of islands and icebergs, experts can translate every second of gameplay into scientific data.

The impact of swapping Candy Crush for Sea Hero Quest could be significant: every two minutes spent playing Sea Hero Quest is equal to five hours of lab based research, so if 100,000 people play Sea Hero Quest for just two minutes, this will equate to 57 years' worth of lab based research.

Gameplay data will be anonymised and stored securely within T-Systems data centre in Munich.

Prof Hornberger says: 'This project provides an unprecedented chance to study how many thousands of people from different countries and cultures navigate space. This will help shed light on how we use our brain to navigate and aid in future work on diagnostics and drug treatment programmes in dementia research.'

Hilary Evans, chief executive at Alzheimer's Research, says: 'We have never seen anything undertaken in dementia research at this scale before. The data set that Deutsche Telekom's Sea Hero Quest generates is truly unprecedented. Until now these kind of investigations took years to coordinate and at best gave us a snapshot of how a very small sample of volunteers behaved. The largest spatial navigation study to date comprised less than 600 volunteers. Providing the research community with access to an open source data set of this nature, at this scale, in such a short period of time is exactly the kind of innovation required to unlock the next breakthrough in dementia research.'

Meanwhile a study lead by Dr Lee Hooper from UEA's Norwich Medical School found that eating family-style meals with care givers, playing music and engaging with multisensory exercise could all help boost nutrition, hydration and quality of life among people with dementia.

Dr Hooper says: 'The risk of dehydration and malnutrition are high in older people, but even higher in those with dementia. Malnutrition is associated with poor quality of life so understanding how to help people eat and drink well is very important in supporting health and quality of life for people with dementia. We wanted to find out what families or carers can do to help people with dementia eat well and drink enough.'

The team systematically reviewed research from around the world and assessed the effectiveness of 56 interventions which all aimed to improve, maintain or facilitate food or drink intake among more than 2,200 people with dementia.

Interventions tested included changing the colour of the plate, increasing exercise, waitress service, playing different types of music, singing, doing tai-chi, creating a home-like eating environment, providing nutrition supplements and boosting the social aspect of eating. They also looked at whether better education and training for formal or informal care-givers could help, as well as behavioural interventions such as giving encouragement for eating.

The research team assessed whether these interventions improved hydration status and body weight and whether the intervention helped older people enjoy the experience of eating or drinking and improved their quality of life.

Dr Hooper says: 'We found a number of promising interventions – including eating meals with care givers, having family-style meals, facilitating social interaction during meals, longer mealtimes, playing soothing mealtime music, doing multisensory exercise and providing constantly accessible snacks. Providing education and support for formal and informal care-givers were also promising. But one of the problems of the research is that many of the studies we looked at were too small to draw any firm conclusions – so no interventions should be clearly ruled in or out and more research in this area is needed. It is probably not just what people with dementia eat and drink that is important for their nutritional wellbeing and quality of life, but a holistic mix of where they eat and drink, the atmosphere, physical and social support offered, the undertsanding of formal caregivers and levels of physical activity enjoyed.'

The research was undertaken in collaboration with AgeUK Norfolk, NorseCare, the University of Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Sea Hero Quest is available for iOS and Android and can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Play. www.seaheroquest.com