Stall Catchers

Stall Catchers is an online game that anyone can play - no experience necessary. In the game, you look at movies from the brains of mice and try to identify vessels as flowing or stalled. This helps to speed up Alzheimer's disease research at Cornell University.

Jump to Science⬎

Stall Catchers was built on one of the oldest volunteer thinking projects: stardust@home, and is using the Virtual Microscope developed by their team. Who knew stardust and blood vessels could be so similar?

Learn more in this 30-second video:

Anyone can be a catcher!

Currently, our catchers range from 6 to 88 years old. Large part of our community includes middle school students, seniors, caregivers and Alzheimer’s patients themselves.

The game is easy to grasp, and we walk you through in the beginning. Check out the "How to" section in the main menu if you need help at any time. Don't worry about making mistakes - each blood vessel is analysed by multiple catchers, and we ensure we generate reliable crowd answers in the end.

Quick intro to catching:

EyesOnALZ

Stall Catchers (formerly "EyesOnALZ") is a citizen science project developed by the Human Computation Institute. The project enables everyone to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease research and speed up the search for a treatment. Stall Catchers, our first Citizen Science game, was launched in October 2016 and now gathers thousands of volunteers.

The idea was born on February 19, 2014, when after being introduced by a mutual colleague, Pietro Michelucci spoke with Chris Schaffer, whose lab was in need of citizen scientists’ help. The project was first funded by the BrightFocus Foundation and officially began in early 2016.

EyesOnALZ includes collaborators from the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab at Cornell University, stardust@home team at U.C. Berkeley and SciStarter.com. Previous collaborators include Sebastian Seung’s Laboratory at Princeton University, WiredDifferently and others.

Jump to Team⬎

Stall Catchers is our most visible project, but that’s not all we do! Check out the "Science" section, as well as our blog, community forum and social media channels to learn more.

Stall Catchers was first supported by the BrightFocus foundation and its generous donors. Learn more about their Alzheimer's Disease Research Program here.

Original Sponsor

Other Generous Supporters

Team

Stall Catchers was created by the Human Computation Institute with support from an outstanding team of collaborators, advisors and volunteers from Cornell University, UC Berkeley, SciStarter, and elsewhere worldwide. Meet our rock-star team here:

Core team

• Pietro Michelucci

  Project lead

  Human Computation Institute

• Eglė Marija Ramanauskaitė

  Citizen Science Coordinator

  Human Computation Institute

• Ieva Vaišnoraitė-Navikienė

  Software & ML Developer

  Human Computation Institute

• Vilma Kazakauskė

  QA Manager

  Human Computation Institute

Volunteers

• Guy Calkins

  Volunteer, Marketing Strategy

• Erin Lamichhane

  Volunteer, Curriculum

• Paul Cuth

  Volunteer, Front-end development

• Ben Rush

  Volunteer, Machine Learning

Contributors

• Alice Sheppard

  Forum Manager

  Human Computation Institute

• Lisa Gusman

  Digital artist

  Cornell University

• Michael Pacheco

  Graphic Design

  Pacheco Designs

Collaborators

• Chris Schaffer

  Alzheimer's Researcher

  Cornell University

• Nozomi Nishimura

  Alzheimer's Researcher

  Cornell University

• Mohammad Haft

  Research Data Analyst

  Cornell University

• Andrew Westphal

  stardust@home expert

  UC Berkeley

• Oliver Bracko

  Alzheimer's Researcher

  Cornell University

Past members

• Victorine Muse

  Vessel Annotation Expert

  Cornell University

• Robert Lettieri

  System Administrator / Software Developer

  UC Berkeley

• Will Marchant

  Software Developer

  UC Berkeley

• Lindsay Vinarcsik

  Biomedical Content

  Cornell University

• Amy Robinson

  Community Development Advisor

  WiredDifferently

• Sebastian Seung

  Computer Vision Advisor

  Princeton University

• Claire Baert

  Project Coordinator

• Laura Rosbrow-Telem

  Strategic Planner and Writer

• Viktorija Zonytė

  Social Media Manager

Advisors

• Anne Bowser

  Privacy & Ethics Advisor

  Woodrow Wilson International

• Meryl Comer

  Alzheimer's Community Advisor

  Geoffrey Beene Foundation

• Darlene Cavalier

  Strategic Advisor, Outreach Partner

  SciStarter

• Jennifer Fee

  Curriculum Advisor

  Cornell Lab of Ornitology

Science

What are we looking for?

What do stalls have to do with Alzheimer's disease?

We don't have the full picture yet. But we do know that about 2% of these capillaries are stalled in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, which causes a 30% overall reduction in brain blood flow. That's the equivalent of the oxygen “debt” you experience when you stand up too quickly.

Our collaborators at Cornell have also been able to reverse stalls, which led to improved memory and reduced other Alzheimer's symptoms in mice. That's all very promising research, but a lot of questions remain to be answered.

From stalls to amyloid plaques and back again:

Reduced blood flow not only deprives the brain of nutrients and oxygen, but could lead to accumulation of amyloid beta. In excess, this protein forms the characteristic plaques that are implicated in Alzheimer’s disease.

Besides damaging neurons, amyloid plaques seem to induce inflammation, which attracts more white blood cells to brain blood vessels, thereby causing even more stalls!

How does knowing where stalls occur help the research?

By knowing which vessels get stalled in the brain of mice that have Alzheimer's, we can find out answers to a range of questions, including whether stalls tend to reoccur in the same vessels or brain areas, do they occur more in certain diets etc.

By counting the stalls before and after certain treatments, we can find out if any of them would be effective in treating Alzheimer's. In fact, that's how Cornell university have already been able to observe cognitive improvement in mice where the number of stalls was reduced.

How can YOU help?

To test this and other hypotheses related to identifying an Alzheimer’s treatment, there's still a lot of data to be analyzed. But the data analysis is extremely time-consuming and beyond the reach of today’s best computer algorithms.

It could take decades to find a viable drug target if the researchers work on it on their own. With the help of citizen scientists playing Stall Catchers, we could reduce this analysis time to just a couple of years!

Press kit

What:

Stall Catchers is the first citizen science project to crowdsource Alzheimer’s disease research.

See the Stall Catchers section to learn more.

Who:

Stall Catchers is being developed by the Human Computation Institute (humancomputation.org). The project includes collaborators and advisors from the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab at Cornell University, stardust@home team at U.C. Berkeley, SciStarter.com, and elsewhere.

See the Team section to learn about all the people involved.

Why:

It has long been known that reduced blood flow in the brain is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. However, new imaging techniques have only recently enabled our collaborators at the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab (Cornell University) to look at this phenomenon in-depth.

Among other discoveries, the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab have demonstrated that stalls might be responsible for progression of Alzheimer's. Meanwhile, reversing stalls in mice reduces Alzheimer’s symptoms, such as cognitive decline and mood changes.

To get to the bottom of this process and discover effective treatment targets for humans there is a lot more work to be done. The manual data curation is so time consuming that it could take decades for the researchers to do alone.

See the Science section to learn more.

How:

Stall Catchers allows everyone to contribute to the research being done at Cornell University. By watching "vessel movies" and identifying whether vessels are flowing or stalled, volunteers are speeding up data analysis by orders of magnitude.

See this video playlist to learn more about how volunteer effort is pushing this research forward.

Download:

• Stall Catchers - Info Sheet (updated 2018-02-28)

• Stall Catchers Science - Fact Sheet (updated 2018-08-25)

• Gallery of Stall Catchers photos, screenshots, and infographics.

All content may be freely reproduced (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Quick facts:

• Stall Catchers is the first citizen science game where the public is directly engaged in analyzing Alzheimer’s disease research data
• Stall Catchers was built on one of the first volunteer thinking platforms – stardust@home
In the first 2 years since Stall Catchers went live, over 13 000 participants joined the game
• As of March 2021, Stall Catchers has over 34,000 players
• Stall Catchers players range from 6 to 88 years old
• In Stall Catchers, participants look at movies of real blood vessels in mouse brains, and search for “stalls” – clogged capillaries where blood is no longer flowing
• The research focus of Stall Catchers – the role of reduced blood flow in the brain – has shown promise in reducing and preventing Alzheimer’s symptoms
• By engaging citizen scientists in this important research, we could reduce the time to discover Alzheimer’s treatment targets from decades to just a few years
• In a year since the game launched, Stall Catchers players have already doubled the speed of Cornell's data analysis, potentially shortening the number of years to find a treatment for Alzheimer's from 30 years to 15. Once our community grows to 30,000 players, this will be further reduced to just 2 or 3 years.
• It currently takes 7 annotations per vessel on average to determine a reliable crowd score
• The crowd answers exceed the minimum required accuracy (99%) for discriminating flowing and stalled vessels, suggesting the answers of Stall Catchers players are as reliable as those of experts
• Stall Catchers can be played by anyone, and any contribution, big or small, can make a difference

In the media:

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Photo gallery: Stall Catchers for everyone, everywhere!

Two young women amazed

Stall Catchers at GameOn

The Stall Catchers team

Play Stall Catchers on tablets

Or play Stall Catchers on laptop

Nozomi, researcher at S-N Lab

Stall Catchers played by senior

and played by middle schoolers

Flowing or stall?

Chris Shaffer, researcher at SN Lab

Young Catcher at British Science Festival

The longest day team

Find more pictures in our press bundle. All content may be freely reproduced (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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