Worum geht es in dem Projekt konkret?
Alzheimer’s is one of the biggest killers in the world, and there is no cure. Scientists at Cornell University have discovered links between stalls (clogged blood vessels) in the brain, and Alzheimer’s disease. By reversing these stalls in mice they have seen memories return and other cognitive functions restored.
But analyzing the data is very time-consuming, so however promising these results may seem, it could take over 30 years to analyze existing data and find a cure for humans. By engaging thousands of players worldwide in the Stall Catchers game, we could reduce that time to just two years.
Wie können Bürger:innen mitforschen?
Stall Catchers is an online game that anyone can play - no experience necessary. Our catchers are 6 to 88 years old: mainly middle school students, seniors, caregivers and Alzheimer’s patients themselves.
In the game, you look at movies from the brains of mice and try to identify vessels as flowing or stalled. The game is easy to grasp, and we walk you through in the beginning.
There is no need to worry about making mistakes - each blood vessel is analyzed by multiple catchers, and we ensure we generate reliable crowd answers in the end.
Was passiert mit den Ergebnissen?
Each time we complete a dataset in Stall Catchers, we send the results back to our collaborators at Cornell University. A dataset might be concerned with the effect of a particular lifestyle aspect (such as a high fat diet) in the development of stalls, or testing the effects of a particular drug.
After analyzing the crowd data, the researchers determine what conclusions can be drawn from them and share these results back with us. In turn, we report them thoroughly in our community blog, forum and scientific publications.
In the near future, crowd generated data will be shared back with the Stall Catchers participants in raw and graphic form.
