Brain injuries are one of the most traumatic experiences a young person can have. Once the child is out of danger and well enough they face a huge number of psychological tests so that psychologists and doctors can understand how their brain and thinking skills have been affected by the injury. Whilst these tests may be necessary, they can be boring, tiring or even distressing to a child who has been through a great deal already and may be mentally and emotionally fragile.
If a child or young person has had a brain injury they complete neuropsychological tests, which helps them to evaluate the child’s ability to recall information, recognise objects, as well as their thinking skills. Researchers from the University of East London have been running a research project to find out if games can be used as a way of assessing young people after they have had a brain injury. Since the current neuropsychological tests can be quite distressing for children, the games would provide a fun alternative that is more familiar and engaging for the children. They are hoping that using games as a neuropsychological test could not only help to test memory and other thinking skills, but also predict the everyday effects of a brain injury.
I interviewed Patrick Murphey, the chief researcher, about his aims for the project, who told me ‘We want to have a short little test that people can do that can tell us how the brain has been affected. The ones that exist are not very interesting or entertaining, or can be hard to engage with, so we are hoping that we can use a game to do that.’ The psychologist could find out what problems the child has in the game and could then use this to determine the more general difficulty they have.
The experiments involve playing the games Guess Who? and Connect 4 around four or five times each with the researcher. Patrick Murphey commented that the games ‘are in a lot of hospitals and children’s centres already and so nurses, psychologists and occupational therapists are already using these to give themselves an idea of what might be happening after a child has had a brain injury, and so what we are trying to do now is come up with something more exact.’ The games are then followed by the taking of a few psychological tests focused on testing the participant’s memory, attention and other thinking skills, areas that are commonly affected by brain injuries.
As well as children with brain injuries, it is also necessary for a healthy group of people, without an injury, to take part in the project. This is because if a child with a brain injury takes this test, there is no way of telling whether this child has done well unless you know how a healthier child did in the same test, as Patrick Murphey explained to me: ‘What we’re doing is seeing how the healthier group do compared to the children who have had a brain injury and if it is a good test it will show that children with a brain injury tend to do a little bit worse than their peers.’ The results from the healthier group of children could be compared to the results of a child who has recently had a brain injury, to tell a doctor how badly they had been affected by the injury.
Gabriella, aged 12, who had a brain haemorrhage two years ago, and underwent a series of tests during her rehab period, has volunteered to take part in the research programme. She told me ‘with the other tests it was a bit boring and tiring, and I didn’t really want to do them. I got a bit fed up. The tests for the research project felt more like a game rather than the kinds of tests I had to do in hospital.’
I also talked to Gabriella’s mother, who explained why she let Gabriella take part in the project: ‘We want to do anything we can to help children who went through the same trauma that Gabriella did and make life a bit easier for them. It would have been much nicer if someone had played a game with her to get the same results.’
The research project, which started about a year and a half ago will be finished this May, and if it proves to be successful, future children who have faced devastating and life changing experiences may actually have a bit of fun to look forward to.
Beatrice Elliott, Newstead Wood School
