OSHU Researchers Go Beyond Standard Online Chats for Dementia Study

Oregon Health & Science University's (OHSU) Layton Aging & Alzheimer's Disease Center is conducting a study called I-CONECT, to investigate whether engaged conversations can delay dementia, reports KATU . The researchers chat with study subjects, concentrating on facts, episodic memory, executive function, thinking through problems, and generating new thoughts. "We have a topic for every day, and our staff have kind of a cheat sheet, you might say, of a lot of questions that we took a lot of time working on that she can ask for each memory type," notes OSHU's Jacob Lindsley. "They are provocative, they're interesting, usually they're something you wouldn't ask in a casual conversation." Lindsley says the researchers hope that taxing participants' memories will yield broad benefits. "Even just delaying dementia for a couple of years can have a tremendous impact, fiscally and in terms of healthcare costs, but also in someone's quality of life," he stresses.