Canadian scientists help aging people retain memory
21/12/2006 16:24
Canadian scientists have found a way to help aging people get less
forgetful by improving their cognitive abilities through well-designed
training.
Everyone experiences some degree of memory loss and cognitive
decline as they get older. The deterioration usually becomes noticeable past the
age of 50, when people may find it slightly more difficult to focus on tasks,
organize errands and remember how to do things in the right
order.
Researchers call these skills "strategic abilities" or " executive
functions," tied to the brain's frontal lobes.
A team of psychologists in
Toronto created a strategy of cognitive rehabilitation, to help people retain
these abilities. Their research can be found in the January 2007 issue of the
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, according to a report
by Canadian Television on Tuesday.
"Our primary emphasis was on improving the
use of general strategic abilities because they are particularly vulnerable to
the aging process," Dr. Donald Stuss, coordinator of the study and director of
the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, said in a press release.
The team
examined 49 healthy older adults with normal cognitive decline. All of the
participants were between the ages of 71 and 87. Over the course of 12 weeks,
psychologists taught them methods to improve their strategic
abilities.
Afterwards, researchers saw a 15 to 40 percent improvement in the
memories of all participants.
"Over a period of six months their improvement
not only maintained, it increased," said Wincour.
The 12-week course was
broken up into three four-week sections, focusing on a different skill involved
in strategic abilities: memory, goal management and psychosocial
function.
The memory training emphasized how to retain and recover
information, while goal management focused on methods to lower the chance of
memory slips, like forgetting to take out the garbage. Psychosocial training was
aimed at boosting the participants' confidence in their mental abilities.
"We
wanted to devise a cognitive rehabilitation program that would produce
improvement over a relatively short period of time, so participants could build
on that while they're still functional and slow down the rate of decline," said
Dr. Gordon Winocur, co- coordinator of the study and a senior scientist at
Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute.
"If we can work with people in the
early stages of cognitive decline, then we can slow down the rate of this
decline and help them maintain a higher level of function for a longer period of
time."
Xinhua
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