Archive for the ‘education,’ Category

Early Language Abilities May Protect Memory Decades Later
Language Skills May Ward Off Alzheimer’s, Dementia
By CRYSTAL PHEND
MedPage Today Staff Writer

July 9, 2009—

Women with sophisticated language as young adults were less likely to suffer the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in old age — even when the characteristic brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s were present at death, researchers found.

The importance of these skills — measured by the “idea density” in an essay they wrote early in adulthood — held for women with intact cognition, regardless of whether a brain autopsy showed the hallmark plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s, Dr. Juan Troncoso of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues reported online in the journal Neurology.

The findings add to the evidence for a so-called “cognitive reserve” that protects against the effects of neurological disease, according to Dr. Robert Stern, a professor of neurology and Alzheimer’s expert at Boston University, who was not involved in the study.

Language abilities — like other measures of this reserve, such as years of education — appear to be linked to “bigger and better brains,” with more connections between neurons, he said. Rather than decreasing the likelihood that a person will develop Alzheimer’s, it apparently staves off some clinical symptoms of the underlying disease, such as memory loss.

Exercising the mind early in life may help build a protective cognitive reserve, although studies like this cannot prove that these mental exercises are effective, added Dr. Samuel Gandy of Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in New York.

“The notion of recommending language acquisition as a kind of mental exercise that might lower one’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease follows logically,” Gandy said.

And even if it doesn’t help in the end, language skills certainly can’t hurt, he said.

Alzheimer’s disease has puzzled researchers because the same degree of damage to the brain causes severe symptoms in some people, but not in others, Troncoso’s group noted.

To determine what factors earlier in life might produce these differences, the researchers looked at a particularly Alzheimer’s-vulnerable area of the brain during autopsies of 38 Roman Catholic nuns.
Language Skills May Stave Off Cognitive Impairment

Autopsies showed that women with known Alzheimer’s disease in this group had significant shrinkage of certain parts of the brain compared with those who had no symptoms or brain lesions.

But the women with asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease — who showed no cognitive impairment before death but showed Alzheimer’s disease-type brain lesions during an autopsy — had markedly larger compartments of key cells in their brains compared with all the other groups of women.

These features may indicate that the neurons in the brains of these women repaired themselves or grew and made new connections to compensate for damage, the researchers said.

Across these groups, there were no differences in age at death, education level, or time from last cognitive evaluation to death that could explain the results.

However, language ability earlier in life did appear to correlate with whether these women showed Alzheimer’s symptoms.

The researchers also analyzed essays that 14 of the women had written as they entered the convent five or six decades earlier.

What they found was that women without old-age cognitive impairments — including two with asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease — had expressed a significantly higher number of ideas for every 10 words in the essay than did the one patient with mild cognitive impairment and the five with Alzheimer’s disease.

Still, while the researchers called this a fascinating observation, they cautioned that the study is probably far too small to draw any solid conclusions about the benefits of a limber mind when it comes to warding off Alzheimer’s.

But though Gandy agreed that the study could not get at the mechanism behind the association, he noted that language skills are complex and exercise sensory, cognitive and motor areas of the brain at the same time.

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Habit is the nursery of errors.

Victor Hugo

A shoe-maker and a technology company are teaming up to develop footwear with a built-in GPS device that could help track down “wandering” seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

“The technology will provide the location of the individual wearing the shoes within 9m (30 feet), anywhere on the planet,” said Andrew Carle, an assistant professor at George Mason University who served as an advisor on the project.

“Sixty per cent of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease will be involved in a ‘critical wandering incident’ at least once during the progression of the disease – many more than once,” he said.

The shoes are being developed by GTX Corp., which makes miniaturised Global Positioning Satellite tracking and location-transmitting technology, and Aetrex Worldwide, a footwear manufacturer.

Carle said embedding a GPS device in a shoe was important because Alzheimer’s victims tend to remove unfamiliar objects placed on them but getting dressed is one of the last types of memory they retain.

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He said a “geo-fence” could be placed around a person’s home and a “Google Map” alert sent to a cell phone, home or office computer when a programmed boundary is crossed.

“The shoe we intend on developing with Aetrex should help authorized family members, friends, or caretakers reduce their stress and anguish by enabling them to locate their loved ones instantly with the click of a mouse,” said Chris Walsh, chief operating officer of GTX Corp.

The companies said they plan to begin testing the product by the fourth quarter of the year.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25596210-5014239,00.html

Since I have come to live in in the convalescent home  I have had to learn many new things.  Since my last stroke in 2005 I have much difficulty getting everything to move around on my body.  At first I couldn’t even speak clearly, but after much speach therapy I got  better.  I still have trouble , but I have gotten used to the different feeling.  To See what this was like  just pretend sometime  that you can’t move around.  All of the things, you used to do  you now can’t do.  The thought is very scary.  Basically that’s what happens when you have a stroke.  One of the things people don’t realize about a stroke is you have to change your thinking.  As you once moved around without giving it a thought  now requires a great deal of thought and attention to move certain parts of your body.

In fact you have to relearn completely new steps inside your mind to move around.  God  has given us a great machine called the brain.  Believe it or not, you can actually re-program  things that have been damaged.  As for myself, I have chosen to do this. This thinking requires a great deal of effort .  Typically we are not programmed to do this.  So, those who are helping you need to be patient and understanding with you.

I heartily recommend this attitude.  This challenge gives your mind something to focus on.  Mentally, you begin to realize that you can be in control again.  Now, granted the control is not what you are used to having but it is the beginning of a great life adventure.

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