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GLITCHERS

@glitchers.bsky.social
186 followers 133 following 30 posts

Edinburgh based game studio working at the intersection of gaming and science 🧠 glitchers.com Sign up to the waitlist ⚓ seaheroquest.com

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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
So happy to also be a part of building this incredible platform with @uclbrainscience.bsky.social 👏
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Navigation is "rarely assessed" in clinical settings, according to this new preprint from first author Sophia Rekers. They found 41% of NMDAR encephalitis patients passed their memory tests but scored below normal on navigation. Sea Hero Quest was one of the tasks ⚓ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Figure from a preprint on autoimmune encephalitis. Left: bar charts showing the share of patients scoring below average, low average or normal on two navigation tasks and three verbal memory tests, for NMDAR encephalitis (top) and LGI1 encephalitis (bottom). Right: mosaic plots showing overlap between navigation and memory impairment. In NMDAR encephalitis, 41% had navigation impairment only, 14% memory only, 16% both and 29% neither. In LGI1 encephalitis, 53% had both, 17% navigation only, 13% memory only and 17% neither.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Cool read on how spatial navigation may protect against Alzheimer's 👏 Sea Hero Quest lets you track your own navigation skills while contributing data to global dementia research. Running a private beta (ethics approved by St Andrews), comment or DM us to join! theconversation.com/taxi-drivers...
theconversation.com
Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain
Working with and living in spatially complex environments may help delay cognitive decline, though more research is needed.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Why we do, what we do, GLITCHERS story and what we're doing next: www.youtube.com/watch?v=id2l...
youtube.com
The power of games talk!
YouTube video by Maxwell Scott-Slade
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
These videos make us laugh, do love this screenshot though. RESEARCHERS x GLITCHERS = 🏅 www.youtube.com/shorts/WXau0...
screenshot of image of GLITCHERS logo and a researcher cheering
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
🚨 New publication in collab with Shayna Rosenbaum's lab: "Aphantasia is associated with spatial memory and navigation difficulties in complex virtual environments" Our test SeaHeroQuest shows a correlation between nav performance and mental imagery (VVIQ) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Aphantasia is associated with spatial memory and navigation difficulties in complex virtual environments in this new journal, using Sea Hero Quest: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... First author Adrienne Li ⭐
sciencedirect.com
Aphantasia is associated with spatial memory and navigation difficulties in complex virtual environments
Visual imagery features centrally in many theories of spatial navigation, yet its contribution to wayfinding is unclear. Sea Hero Quest (SHQ), a navig…
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Heres our article from 2022 on sleep and cognition: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Reported sleep duration reveals segmentation of the adult life-course into three phases - Nature Communications
Sleep varies within and between individuals. Here, using self-reported sleep duration from a large sample of participants across 63 countries, the authors show three phases in the adult human life-cou...
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Massive study in @nature.com, converges with our past study of 750,000 people (Sea hero quest) to show u-shape curves for the impact of sleep. We studied cognition, here its disease impact: Sleep chart of biological ageing clocks in middle and late life www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Sleep chart of biological ageing clocks in middle and late life - Nature
A cross-organ, multi-omics U-shaped relationship between sleep duration and biological ageing clocks highlights the potential of sleep optimization to promote healthy ageing, lower disease risk and ex...
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Spatial navigation is the future..
bbc.co.uk
Three enjoyable ways to slow your brain's ageing
Our brains thrive on a challenge, but it doesn't all have to be hard work to see the health benefits. Here are three simple and fun ways to protect your brain as you age.
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Antoine Coutrot @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
⚠️New review on video games for cognitive citizen science! "From Players to Participants: Citizen Science and Video Games to Understand Cognition" arxiv.org/abs/2604.24321
Cognitive Citizen Science Games : Sample Size as a function of starting year. For each game we show its logo, research area, sample size and whether it is a bespoke game or embedded in an existing game.
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Antoine Coutrot @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
My favourite example of the benefits of using video games in cognitive science:
For instance, if Sea Hero Quest used a classic in-lab approach to
gather its 4 million players dataset, it would have taken 500 years for a full-time PhD student (15 min/participant, 2000 hours per year) and have cost around 25 million euros in staff salary, 40 million euros in participants compensation (10€/participant). And this does not take into account the cost of flying participants from Japan, Brazil or South Africa to our French or British labs.
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Antoine Coutrot @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Max from @glitchers.bsky.social (creator of Sea Hero Quest) and @edgardubourg.bsky.social (working at the interface between game dev and scientists) provide insights into creating successful video games for scientific research and explain why this approach is still so rare.
Implementation pipeline for Citizen Science games in Cognitive Science research
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Antoine Coutrot @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
⚠️New review straight out of the oven! "Spatial navigation in preclinical Alzheimer's disease: A review" arxiv.org/abs/2603.23082 We focus on spatial navigation as a sensitive cognitive marker in preclinical AD, compiling evidence from cognitively unimpaired individuals with positive AD biomarkers.
Anatomical representation of Braak stages in Alzheimer’s disease (with a focus on stages I to III associated with preclinical AD) and spatial navigation computations.
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
New lab preprint! Human Navigation Behaviour and Brain Dynamics in Real-world Contexts with co-authors: @pfvelasco.bsky.social and @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2603.11347
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
Thanks to @cnn.com for covering our research on London taxi drivers in their new, rather chatty, format 'Creators' Taxi driver Tom Scullion is the star of this piece. He trains others to learn the knowledge an has so many insights into that process. #neuroskyence www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7df...
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Great article from @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social which mentions Sea Hero Quest. "Video games are no longer just a pastime. They are becoming a mirror of the brain, capable of stimulating it, treating it, and helping us better understand it"
20minutes.fr
Jeux vidéo et cerveau : quand le virtuel stimule nos capacités cognitives
Quels effets les jeux vidéo ont sur le cerveau ? Entre stimulation visuelle et sonore et outils de recherches scientifiques, ces loisirs sont de vrais trésors pour nos capacités cognitives.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
We took Sea Hero Quest to two conferences one month apart. @techcrunch.com Disrupt & @unity.com Unite. One a focused game development conference and another big tech..
glitchers.com
A Tale of Two Conferences
We compare TechCrunch Disrupt and Unity Unite conferences with the same product demo, 1 month apart. Here's what we learned ...
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
You can sign up for the early access to the new Sea Hero Quest: seaheroquest.com
seaheroquest.com
Sea Hero Quest - Take Control of Your Brain Health
Join the world's largest study on spatial navigation and early Alzheimer's detection. Test your cognitive performance against 4.3 million players worldwide and contribute to groundbreaking research.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
A wild AI hallucination just made Sea Hero Quest blow up in Korea. Now I just want to know… what on earth are people asking ChatGPT to get this?
glitchers.com
Sea Hero Quest Goes Viral in South Korea
Sea Hero Quest went viral in South Korea with over 1.2 million views, adding a huge wave of new people to our waitlist.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Can’t believe we’re in @sifted.eu Such a joy to represent Scotland’s gaming scene in Japan and to share Sea Hero Quest with Japan from our stand at the World Expo. Thanks to @techscaler.bsky.social for making it happen. Read more below:
sifted.eu
Scottish startups up their game in Japan
CodeBase extended its successful Techscaler programme to Japan earlier this year, taking a cohort of eight Scottish gaming startups there.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Buzzing to see Sea Hero Quest being featured in the upcoming book Hacking Humanity by @laralewington.bsky.social which has sparked some coverage over the past few days. Big thanks to @hugospiers.bsky.social 🧠 The waitlist for the latest version is growing fast - sign up here: seaheroquest.com
Sea Hero Quest being featured in the i Newspaper and the Daily Mail.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
If you think the future of cognitive health is doing the same old stuff… scroll on. 💤 We’re building a lab in your pocket - powered by games, built with science - shoutout to our amazing partners @hugospiers.bsky.social, @antoinecoutrot.bsky.social + crew! 🧠🎮 GO ON PUT A LAB IN YOUR POCKET:
glitchers.com
PUT A LAB IN YOUR POCKET — GLITCHERS - Games for Good
When we launched Sea Hero Quest , scientists had no idea what healthy navigation performance looked like. It was so important to understand, because it’s one of the first things to decline in Alzhei...
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Could Sea Hero Quest be used as part of a strategy for detecting early markers of cognitive decline? 🧠 Translational Psychiatry article from '22 - Robert Whelan, Florentine M. Barbey, Marcia R. Cominetti, Claire M. Gillan & Anna M. Rosická
nature.com
Developments in scalable strategies for detecting early markers of cognitive decline - Translational Psychiatry
Translational Psychiatry - Developments in scalable strategies for detecting early markers of cognitive decline
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Yesterday's post on our @pnas.org study of London taxi drivers. Yellow lines = imagined journeys, described street-by-street. Some were 30 streets, which if using a tree-search over 26,000 possible states would take a very very long time. Daniel McNamee's models show how they compress this problem:
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
🚨 New fMRI preprint from our lab 🚨 "Brain dynamics during architectural experience: prefrontal and hippocampal regions track aesthetics and spatial complexity" Led by Lara Gregorians with co-authors, Zita Patai, Pablo Fernandez Velasco & Fiona Zisch. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
⚓ Can you believe it's been almost 9 years since Sea Hero Quest first set sail? In 2025, we’re embarking on an exciting chapter in the SHQ universe as we move closer to launching the clinical version. Here’s more about what’s ahead and how you can get involved www.glitchers.com/blog/longitu... 🧠
glitchers.com
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Paula Beakes 🔜 TAGS Festival @paulabeakes.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Little legend in the studio today 🐾 @glitchers.bsky.social
A cute cat, Scout, descends a wooden staircase looking around the corner.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
If you are interested in using Sea Hero Quest in a clinical setting, please read more on our website & get in touch. New features including longitudinal testing and visible outcome measures on the dashboard are coming soon:
glitchers.com
GLITCHERS: Early Intervention for Alzheimer's dementia
Navigation performance is a key early indicator in Alzheimer’s dementia. Sea Hero Quest by GLITCHERS can accurately measure navigation performance throughout life, making it an invaluable assessment t...
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
🧠 ⚓ If you are a researcher with ethics and you'd like to try a spatial navigation test with a 4.3 million data benchmark - please register to use Sea Hero Quest here: dash.seahero.quest
A computer game could reveal early signs of dementia
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Great to hear @tspiresjones.bsky.social on Radio 4 last night discussing these results. Certainly there is hope that we create ways of helping boost all our thinking and memory in the future, which likely will be beneficial.
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Indeed @glitchers.bsky.social are right, there is great promise with apps like Sea Hero Quest to help train up people's skills and help monitor for decline I'm excited to see how this can develop.
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
💡Extremely interesting paper, make sure to check out @hugospiers.bsky.social thread on this. Spatial training could have a protective role for AD! We have an incredibly sensitive spatial navigation test with a data benchmark of 4.3 million people with Sea Hero Quest 🧠
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
V interesting study in @bmj.com USA Taxi drivers & ambulance drivers are less likely to die of Alzheimer's disease than people of other professions Links made to Eleanor Maguire's famous discovery that the posterior hippocampus of London taxi drivers was larger than controls. My thoughts in🧵
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
GLITCHERS was started from the ashes of a mental health event, but it isn't a personal journey anymore, we are a team ⚡ This year we reset the company back to zero, read more here:
glitchers.com
A RESET TO ZERO — GLITCHERS - Games for Good
Find out about the journey over 11 years and why this is the year to set the clock back to 0.
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
⚠️ New preprint ! "Separable cognitive & motor decline tracked across adult life-span for goal-directed navigation" Giovanni Pezzulo's lab modelled the trajectories in Sea Hero Quest to reveal dynamic patterns of goal-directed control and their decline with age: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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The UNITy Project @theunityproject.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Fill out our online pre-screening form to check your eligibility for a psychedelic study at UCL: 👉 bit.ly/unity-ucl Who we're looking for: Age: 21-65 - Heavy drinkers - Based in London Please share with your friends and family.
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Great to see on bsky @glitchers.bsky.social who created Sea Hero Quest and made it such a success as a tool for assessing spatial navigation ability www.glitchers.com
glitchers.com
GLITCHERS: Early Intervention for Alzheimer's dementia
Navigation performance is a key early indicator in Alzheimer’s dementia. Sea Hero Quest by GLITCHERS can accurately measure navigation performance throughout life, making it an invaluable assessment t...
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
We've pulled together this page to highlight the papers published so far using Sea Hero Quest 🧠 213 research projects are currently in progress, if you would like to get involved please get in touch ⚡ www.glitchers.com/sea-hero-que...
glitchers.com
Sea Hero Quest in Data — GLITCHERS - Games for Good
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Read this thread about some of the incredible work that's been in progress- all using Sea Hero Quest 🥲⚡
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Orca cat is in the studio today 🤟
Black and white cat on book shelfBlack and white cat on stairsBlack and white cat in drawerBlack and white cat behind notebooks
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Best get back to the pitch deck, here's a GLITCHERS pet, follow for more pet pics and some talk about early intervention for dementia 🧠🐱
a large cat in a spaceship
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Now, we're focusing on early Alzheimer's/Dementia detection using a spatial navigation test wrapped in a game - Sea Hero Quest. It can accurately measure navigation performance throughout life, making it an invaluable assessment tool for dementia prevention - woah! Read more here: glitchers.com
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
We recently collaborated with biodiversity researchers on a prototype to try and answer some complex questions when it comes to landscape restoration, read more on our blog: www.glitchers.com/blog/restore...
glitchers.com
Restore Degraded Landscapes — GLITCHERS - Games for Good
Find your role in restoring a degraded landscape — play for free on your desktop or mobile without downloading anything. No signup required!
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GLITCHERS @glitchers.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
HIYA! Welcome to our Bluesky page excited to share what we've been up to the last 11 years. We are GLITCHERS we make games in collaboration with science. Not serious games or gamification - just super fun games that happen to be able to collect super sensitive data for research 🧠
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