Joel Ramirez is a 2008 ASRP Doctoral Award recipient from University of Toronto who works under the supervision of Dr. Sandra Black at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. Learn a bit about his research and finding from his publication: Subcortical hyperintensity volumetrics in Alzheimer’s disease and normal elderly in the Sunnybrook Dementia Study: correlations with atrophy, executive function, mental processing speed, and verbal memory.
I was able to help care for my father-in-law in the last year and a half of his life and I have to say it was a real eye-opener. He had dementia – probably related to a stroke. But here was someone who had been very, very sharp and very independent who increasingly needed more of our help in terms of meals, housework and making sure he took his medications correctly. We were very blessed in the sense that we…
I’ve loved robots for as long as I can remember. When I watched Star Wars as a kid, I didn’t want to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo – I wanted to be the guy who built R2-D2. So I am thrilled that today that what was once science fiction is becoming reality. Google is building cars that can drive themselves, and the best chess and Jeopardy! players in the world are computers from IBM. I’m especially enthusiastic about the…
I remember very clearly that moment when I knew what I wanted to do for my PhD. It was 1994 and I was visiting a long-term care facility as part of my studies. I met some really agitated patients with dementia. When I asked the doctor with me what caused the agitation in some patients but not others, he said no one really knew. I thought to myself we need to understand this. There has to be a better way….
I interact with a lot of patients at St. Michael’s Hospital’s memory clinic and at the stroke and brain tumour clinics. Often, the first words out of people’s mouths isn’t about their condition, but about their driver’s license. They want to know when they are going to get it back. At first, it was mind-boggling for me that they wouldn’t begin with questions about the possibility of their tumour coming back, or the results of their memory tests. Obviously their…
Brain function has always fascinated me because it’s very complicated. It’s not black and white, and so many things contribute to how you think and how you behave. That interconnection means mental health ties into your physical health, and vice versa. Because I’ve always been an analytical person, I like the challenge of figuring out those connections. Especially when the payoff is a better quality of life. As we all know, Alzheimer’s disease can affect quality of life so dramatically….
Earlier this October, 480 attendees gathered at the Weston Bayshore Hotel in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia for the 7th Canadian Conference on Dementia. Dynamic speakers from Canada and the US known throughout the world were featured in 11 plenary sessions, 4 groups of 3 parallel sessions and 11 concurrent workshops over the 3 days; as well as 6 new and notable oral presentations from young investigators and 55 poster presentations which graced the upper halls of the hotel. Day 1…
When I was a community health nurse in the early 80s, I didn’t really appreciate how heavily the formal health system relied on families to care for those with dementia at home. I was told that it was important for families to learn how to provide care; therefore, I taught them how to bathe their relatives, monitor their meds and access community information. Although I feel I was a competent nurse and supported families if they felt unsure or uneasy…
When you design assistive technologies to help adults with cognitive difficulties live more independently, you have to know what users need. That sounds simple but we really know so little about this. What social-demographic factors affect their decisions about how to use the technology and when? Does their level of education, age, culture or religion have an effect? These are brand new questions. Most developers aren’t even thinking about this. It’s not surprising then that nine out of 10 devices…