Neuroplasticity games for social cognition disorders

• US 9,886,866 B2
• Filed: 02/08/2016
• Issued: 02/06/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Posit Science Corp.
• Original Assignee: Posit Science Corp.
• Inventors: Merzenich, Michael M., Nahum, Mor
• Primary Examiner(s): Rowland, Steve
• Application Number:
  US15/017,904
• Publication Number:
  US 20160155354A1
• Time in Patent Office: 729 Days
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/47 involving branching, e.g. choosing one of several possible scenarios at a given point in time
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/537 using indicators, e.g. showing the condition of a game character on screen
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/67 adaptively or by learning from player actions, e.g. skill level adjustment or by storing successful combat sequences for re-use
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/80 Special adaptations for executing a specific game genre or game mode
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/00 Teaching not covered by other main groups of this subclass teaching or practice apparatus for gun-aiming or gun-laying F41G3/26
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/00 Electrically-operated educational appliances working with questions and answers G09B7/00; simulators G09B9/00; advertising or displaying in general G09F
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/02 with visual presentation of the material to be studied, e.g. using film strip
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/06 with both visual and audible presentation of the material to be studied
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/065 Combinations of audio and video presentations, e.g. videotapes, videodiscs, television systems
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/70 relating to mental therapies, e.g. psychological therapy or autogenous training
• CPC Class Codes: Y02A 90/10 Information and communication technologies [ICT] supporting adaptation to climate change, e.g. for weather forecasting or climate simulation

Abstract

A training program is configured to systematically drive neurological changes to overcome social cognitive deficits. Various games challenge the participant to observe gaze directions in facial images, match faces from different angles, reconstruct face sequence, memorize social details about sequentially presented faces, identify smiling faces, find faces whose expression matches the target, identify emotions implicitly expressed by facial expressions, match pairs of similar facial expressions, match pairs of emotion clips and emotion labels, reconstruct sequences of emotion clips, identify emotional prosodies of progressively shorter sentences, match sentences with tags that identify emotional prosodies with which they are expressed, identify social scenarios that best explain emotions expressed in video clips, answer questions about social interactions in multi-segmented stories, choose expressions and associated prosodies that best describe how a person would sound in given social scenarios, and/or understand and interpret gradually more complex social scenes.

Claims

1. A training program configured to systematically drive neurological changes to overcome social cognitive deficits, the training program including at least one computerized social cue perception game that challenges a game participant to observe gaze directions in facial images and is configured to:

present a plurality of target and/or distractor stimuli;

prompt the game participant to respond to the target and/or distractor stimuli;

receive the game participant'"'"'s input through a game piece;

provide an indication to the game participant of whether the game participant'"'"'s input was accurate or apt;

provide a signal indicative of the game participant'"'"'s performance or game difficulty; and

repeat the presenting through providing a signal steps over multiple repetitions while adapting one or more difficulty parameters to target maintenance of a success rate within a predetermined range.

2. The training program of claim 1, wherein the at least one computerized social cue perception game challenges the game participant to find a face with the same gaze direction as a target face.

3. The training program of claim 1, wherein the at least one computerized social cue perception game challenges the game participant to select a peripheral object at which the target face is gazing.

4. The training program of claim 1, wherein the at least one computerized social cue perception game challenges the game participant to match a face gazing in one direction with the same face gazing in a different direction.

5. The training program of claim 1, wherein the at least one computerized social cue perception game shows a face making a speeded glance shift in one of many possible directions and challenges the game participant to select an object in the direction of the speeded glance.

6. The training program of claim 1, wherein the at least one computerized social cue perception game challenges the game participant to follow a direction of different faces'"'"' eye gazes in relation to a plurality of objects, including a target object, and to identify the target object.

7. A training program configured to systematically drive neurological changes to overcome social cognitive deficits, the training program including at least one computerized emotional perception game that challenges a game participant to observe and make judgments about emotional expressions and is configured to:

present a plurality of target and/or distractor stimuli;

prompt the game participant to respond to the target and/or distractor stimuli;

receive the game participant'"'"'s input through a game piece;

provide an indication to the game participant of whether the game participant'"'"'s input was accurate or apt;

provide a signal indicative of the game participant'"'"'s performance or game difficulty; and

repeat the presenting through providing a signal steps over multiple repetitions while adapting one or more difficulty parameters to target maintenance of a success rate within a predetermined range.

8. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game challenges the game participant to find a face with the same facially expressed emotion as a target face.

9. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game challenges the game participant to name a facial expression shown in a video clip showing a person facially expressing an emotion.

10. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game challenges the game participant to match pairs of similar facial expressions.

11. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game challenges the game participant to match video clips of emotional expressions with labels describing the emotion.

12. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game challenges the game participant to reconstruct a sequence of emotion clips.

13. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game presents a series of progressively shorter sentences, each associated with an emotional prosody, and challenging the game participant to identify the emotional prosody of each sentence.

14. The training program of claim 7, wherein the at least one computerized emotional perception game challenges the game participant to match pairs of emotionally-suggestive sentences with tags describing the emotion.

15. A training program configured to systematically drive neurological changes to overcome social cognitive deficits, the training program including at least one computerized theory of mind game that challenges a game participant to infer the mental states of others, wherein the game is configured to:

present a plurality of target and/or distractor stimuli;

prompt the game participant to respond to the target and/or distractor stimuli;

receive the game participant'"'"'s input through a game piece;

provide an indication to the game participant of whether the game participant'"'"'s input was accurate or apt;

provide a signal indicative of the game participant'"'"'s performance or game difficulty; and

repeat the presenting through providing a signal steps over multiple repetitions while adapting one or more difficulty parameters to target maintenance of a success rate within a predetermined range.

16. The training program of claim 15, wherein the at least one computerized theory of mind game challenges game participants to apprehend a social situation and the meanings conveyed by voice inflection.

17. The training program of claim 15, wherein the at least one computerized theory of mind game challenges the game participant to answer questions about persons discussed in a social conversation.

18. The training program of claim 15, wherein the at least one computerized theory of mind game presents a short written narrative about a person and challenges the game participant to infer what the person would have thought or felt based on the narrated circumstances.

19. The training program of claim 15, wherein the at least one computerized theory of mind game challenges the game participant to follow the direction of different people'"'"'s eye gazes and interpret those gazes as denoting their thoughts.

20. A training program configured to systematically drive neurological changes to overcome social cognitive deficits, the training program comprising:

computerized games from each of the following categories;

social cue perception games that challenge a game participant to observe gaze directions in facial images;

emotional perception games that challenge the game participant to observe and make judgments about emotional expressions; and

theory of mind games that challenge the game participant to infer the mental states of others;

wherein each game is configured to;

present a plurality of target and/or distractor stimuli;

prompt the game participant to respond to the target and/or distractor stimuli;

receive the game participant'"'"'s input through a game piece;

provide an indication to the game participant of whether the game participant'"'"'s input was accurate or apt;

provide a signal indicative of the game participant'"'"'s performance or game difficulty; and

repeat the presenting through providing a signal steps over multiple repetitions while adapting one or more difficulty parameters to target maintenance of a success rate within a predetermined range.