Seniors Solutions: Helping seniors remember specific dates/tasks

1. Seniors Solutions: Helping seniors remember specific dates/tasks By: Annie Liu, Sherry Huang, Philip S., and JakubCzachor Class: 704 Group: 3

2. Specific Question/Problem: How can we help a senior with bad memory recall specific dates and tasks?

3. Background Info: Older adults use different parts of their to store memories of the bad times and finding that may have to do with the resilience of seniors. Researchers from Duke University compared brain scans of older and younger adults when the two groups were asked to remember events that yielded unpleasant emotions. The scans showed that younger adults relied more on the brain region involving the amygdala and hippocampus. Elders called upon a “higher thinking” area of the brain called the frontal cortex and they tend to show a reduction in memory for negative pictures. It indicates that people learn to be less affected by negative information in order to maintain their well being and emotional states.

4. Data for Problem Researchers at Duke University conducted an experiment that involves testing on young adults and elders’ brains. Here are the experiment details: The older and younger subject groups, with average ages of 70 and 24 respectively, were hooked up to an fMRI machine and shown a series of 30 photographs, some of which had strong negative content. Later they were asked to complete a recall task to determine whether the brain activity that occurred while looking at the pictures could predict what types of content were memorized more accurately. Both age groups were equally affected by the emotional content depicted by the pictures, such as violent acts or attacking snakes. What differed were the brain connections used to remember those pictures later on, said Roberto Cabeza, a neuroscientist with Duke University’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.

5. Current Solutions: • Writing down tasks and dates on a list or calendars. • Setting a reminder for tasks and dates on you cell phone.

6. Senior Partner Interview • Our group’s senior partner is Philip’s grandmother. • Us: What is something specific you always forget about? Senior: I need to remember to refill my medications or pick them up at the drugstore. I sometimes forget that I have laundry at the dry cleaners as well. • Us: Is there something that can help you remember the specific tasks? Senior: An alarm clock type of thing would be suitable. It could make sounds to alert the person or it could audibly say the reminders. • Us: What do you think about it or any suggestion to improve on our solution for your problem? Senior: The audible hearing aid is a good idea. Maybe make the device be built into a headset or ear piece. In the future, have a variety of models like a choice of either a traditional hearing aid design, an ear bud, or even an over-the-ear earpiece.

7. Innovative Solution: Ourgroup created solution for seniors with memory problems is a ear piece that reminds you of specific dates or task that has to be perform at a specific time and it will be audible. The watch is where you set the reminders. For example: if you need to wake up at 9:00 a.m., the ear piece will start saying “WAKE UP!” at that time.

8. Data for Solution: • We used our senior to test out the hearing aid and the results are:

9. Expert’s Advice • We contacted Dr. Paula Durlofsky. She is a psychologist that specializes in the treatment of older adults and the administration of cognitive and psychological evaluations specific to memory and cognition. • Here are some interview questions: US: Why do seniors suffer from memory loss? Expert: As we age our ability to retain, process, and organize information decreases. Unfortunately, as we age our brains like our muscles are not as strong—aging brains take longer to remember information and to learn new information. US: What do you think of our solution? Expert: I really like your idea for helping seniors with memory loss and the ear piece is very essential. The watch is very easy to set dates and tasks because it has so little buttons. US: Is there any way we can improve our solution? Expert: I will suggest that you include a instructional manual for the seniors and don’t make the instructions too complicated for the seniors to read. We also tried to contact Dr. Murray Grossan, but we have not yet gotten a reply yet.

10. Plan for the Future: For the future, we plan to send our designs to companies such as Amplisound which currently produce hearing aids to see if our memory device invention we have made is good enough for production. The inventions will be shipped around the U.S to seniors that have memory loss problems. The ear piece will cost about $20-$30 and the watch will cost around $15-20 .

11. Sharing our Project: • We made posters that we hang on in teachers’ classrooms and pass out in lunch to our classmates. • We also uploaded our PowerPoint to the internet, so everyone can see it. Link: Http://www.MemoryLossProject.Weebly.Com

12. Why Our Solution Will Work Our solution is better than all current solutions to memory loss problems because it is: • Easier to use • More reliable, instead of writing something down on a piece of paper, which can get lost. • Harder to lose, as the Senior will always have this near them.

13. Bibliography: Sites we used: • Psychsocgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/51B/4/P226.abstract • www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28258191/ns/health-aging/t/elderly-store-bad-memories-differently/#.UJ2MfY2d58E