Stall Catchers is a new game available online to the public and it’s being used to research Alzheimer’s disease. The game was developed by UC Berkley and other institutions as part of the EyesOnALZ, a citizen science project developed by the Human Computation Institute. Based on research that has shown capillary stalls in the brain can contribute to Alzheimer’s, players are asked to watch feed of capillaries in mouse brains and report when they observe a brain stall. This use of the general public to assist research has been done successfully before. Project Stardust@home was used by NASA with over 30,000 amateur scientists helping to identify seven particles of interstellar origin by viewing interstellar dust collected b NASA. Without the help of the public, the research observing stalls could take over a year when done in a lab. StallCatchers will be available to anyone who has a computer, laptop or cell phone. It’s will assist valuable research while giving the players satisfaction in doing important Alzheimer’s research.
Key Points:
- 1A new online science game Stall Catchers allows the general public to directly contribute to Alzheimer’s disease research and help scientists search for a cure.
- 2Stall Catchers will allow participants to look at movies of real blood vessels in mouse brains and search for clogged capillaries, or stalls, where blood is no longer flowing,
- 3Searching for stalls is a time-consuming task. With the help of citizen scientists playing Stall Catchers scientists believe they can find targets for treatment of Alzheimer’s faster.
The citizen science approach for Stall Catchers was developed by physicist Andrew Westphal, a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.
Read the full article at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-10-online-game-alzheimer.html
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