Alzheimer’s patients make soon find relief by playing video games.

Neuroscape, a research lab at the University of California at San Francisco, has spent the past eight years pursuing that mission. Now, a spin-off called Akili Interactive Labs is engaged in medical trials to get games approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Furthest along is a game called “Project: EVO,” which is currently at the last level of FDA approval as a treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Akili, which is based in Boston, has also partnered with Pfizer (PFE) to study how its games can detect evidence of Alzheimer’s.

Adam Gazzaley, founder and executive director of Neuroscape and an Akili board member had this to say. “Our goal here is not necessarily to boot out the pharmaceutical industry,”. Rather, it’s “to find new approaches that have better side effect profiles, that can be targeted in a more personal way, and then figure out how they can work with our current system,”.

Gazzaley added, “Our brain’s plasticity, its ability to modify itself, really responds to experience,… If we can create very targeted experiences that are also adaptive to a person, it can help improve their brain function.”