Experts say personalized music playlists may help people with dementia revisit happy memories, because music can trigger brain regions undamaged by the disease, reports the International Business Times . The Scotland-based Playlist for Life charity has trained more than 4,650 healthcare staff to use music as an alternative dementia treatment. The charity uses its Music Detective program to encourage families to talk to relatives to learn what kinds of music activate happy memories, with personalized playlists preferably compiled before loved ones develop dementia. Playlist for Life volunteers are not certified music therapists, but they comply with the fifth edition of Stanford University's Gerdner protocol and suggest timing sessions half an hour before subjects must perform difficult tasks like bathing. Recommended steps begin with checking the top songs from when the person was between 10 and 30 years old, then adding "Inheritance" tracks from childhood memories or songs contributed by best friends and former boyfriends or girlfriends. The third step is to add "identity" tracks, or songs that relate to heritage, nationality, and ethnicity.

Memory cafes are gaining favor as social sites for people with Alzheimer's or dementia, their caregivers, and their friends, reports Being Patient . The National Alzheimer's Cafe Alliance says dementia cafes are not meant to be a support group, but as spaces offering relief from dementia. The Memory Cafe in West Falls, N.Y., holds sessions twice a month at a community arts center, offering live music and lunch for any visitors. Music has been found to help people with Alzheimer's establish connections. Alzheimer's cafes set up dementia-friendly communities that de-stress going out in public and socializing. Researchers and caregivers concur that socialization is an important part of delaying Alzheimer's and dementia.

According to CNN , scientists have long suspected a possible link between anticholinergic drugs and an increased risk of dementia. A study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine this week suggests that the link is strongest for certain classes of anticholinergic drugs — especially antidepressants, antipsychotics, bladder antimuscarinics, and antiepileptic drugs. Researchers wrote: "There was nearly a 50 percent increased odds of dementia" associated with a total anticholinergic exposure of more than 1,095 daily doses within a 10-year period, which is equivalent to an older man or woman taking a strong anticholinergic medication daily for at least three years compared with no exposure. "The study is important because it strengthens a growing body of evidence showing that strong anticholinergic drugs have long-term associations with dementia risk," commented Carol Coupland, first author of the study and professor of medical statistics in primary care at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. "This is important information for physicians to know when considering whether to prescribe these drugs." The research involved analyzing data on 284,343 adults 55 and older in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2016. The data came from QResearch, a large database of anonymized health records. The research team found that the odds of dementia rose from 1.06 among those with the lowest anticholinergic exposure to 1.49 among those with the highest exposure versus having no prescriptions for anticholinergic drugs.

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order intended to give Americans more information about the cost and quality of health care services to help them comparison shop before they get care, the Washington Post reports. The order requires health officials to propose a regulation within 60 days that would eventually require hospitals and doctors employed by hospitals to post their charges—including disclosing for the first time the discounted rates they negotiate with insurers. Hospitals and insurers have warned that being forced to share the results of these secret negotiations would destroy competition among health care institutions and insurers and would actually drive up prices. Senior administration officials said they have not decided how much detail would be required about the negotiated rates and that such fine print would be left to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is instructed to write new rules to carry out this and other aspects of the order. A senior administration official said the executive order "leaves room for us to work with industry" to decide the level of detail that is required to be made public.

Accenture has pledged to retrain nearly every one of its workers who is at risk of losing a job to automation, reports the Wall Street Journal . The consulting and outsourcing giant is using a large portion of the nearly $1 billion the firm spends on training each year. Accenture has invested in counselors and specialists to assist in matching newly trained employees to new assignments. Thousands of Accenture employees have already completed retraining and moved into new roles. Some employees, though, decided they did not want to learn a new job and opted to leave the company. Evidence suggests many businesses and investors see automation as creating shareholder value largely by reducing labor costs. Some 74 percent of executives in 2017 said they planned to use artificial intelligence to automate various tasks over the next three years, according to Accenture's research. Only 3 percent said they were going to significantly increase their investment in training workers over that period.

New research conducted by Hugo J. Aparicio of Boston University and using data from the Framingham Study found a greater decline in ischemic strokes for older adults than for middle-aged adults over time, according to Medical Xpress . Aparicio and his colleagues examined age- and sex-adjusted 10-year incidence of ischemic strokes over more than four decades for two distinct groups from the Framingham Study: participants aged 35-54 at the start of follow-up, and participants older than 55 at the start of follow-up. The risk for ischemic stroke did not significantly decline over time for the mid-life group, while the older group saw a decline in strokes from the earliest data sets to the most recent. Aparicio stressed that early attention to cardiovascular risk factors and preventative lifestyle changes are essential to minimizing the risk of ischemic stroke.

A new study from Georgia Tech University explores the correlation between sleep and memory retention, according to EurekAlert! . The study tested Atlanta-area adults over a seven-night period. They wore accelerometers on their wrists to sleep at night and then reported to Georgia Tech for memory tests measuring electroencephalography (EEG) brain wave activity. The researchers reaffirmed an existing conclusion that better sleep correlates with better memory retention in older adults. They also found that African-American participants of all ages reported lower scores on the memory tests after poor sleep. The study found that black adults get about 36 fewer minutes of sleep than adults of other races, leading to a 12 percent decrease in memory-related brain activity. The study concluded that getting sufficient sleep every night is a better system than trying to catch up on sleep on holidays and weekends.

University of Alberta (U of A)-led research is transforming healthcare professionals' assessment of seniors' decision-making capacity, reports Medical Xpress . The new model led to a 60 percent decline in referrals to geriatricians and an 80 percent decline in the number of capacity interviews required when it was first tested. The U of A team crafted guiding principles to be minimally intrusive and follow seniors' explicit wishes as best as possible, to sustain their at-home safety. "We wanted to cut down on wasted time and testing for both the senior and the healthcare professionals," says U of A Professor Lesley Charles. The new model accords seniors the right to knowingly take a risk by choice, even if it is difficult for the healthcare team and loved ones to accept. "With the capacity assessment, it's not their decision that you are judging, but the quality of their decision-making and whether they understand the consequences of their decision," notes U of A Professor Jasneet Parmar. The process begins with a pre-assessment, which can help to avoid, or at least postpone, the need for a declaration of incapacity. The medical team ensures the senior's medical and psychiatric stability before performing cognitive and functional tests, and then all stakeholders brainstorm ways to keep the senior safe at home until memory care is necessary.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau found the American population is growing older as baby boomers approach retirement age and natural birth rates drop, reports NextGov . "More than four out of every five counties were older in 2018 than in 2010," said the Census Bureau's Luke Rogers. "This aging is driven in large part by baby boomers crossing over the 65-year-old mark." The median U.S. age increased to 38.2 years, up from 37.2 years in 2010. Nationally, women are slightly older than men, with a median age of 39.5 years versus 36.9 years. The portion of the 65-and-over population grew from 12.8 percent in 2010 to 16 percent in 2018, with that demographic increasing by 30.2 percent since 2010 — compared to a 1.1 percent shrinkage in the under-18 population. "Even though we've become so attuned to widening geographic gaps in economics and politics, nearly all of the country faces similar demographic trends," said Indeed chief economist Jed Kolko.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to mitigate ageist attitudes, bias, and stereotypes through education and intergenerational contact, reports ScienceDaily . The research team said programs that cultivate such contact, in conjunction with education about the aging process and its misconceptions, are most effective — with women, teenagers, and young adults benefiting the most. "If we teach people more about aging — if they're less scared of it, less negative about it, and less uncomfortable interacting with older people — that helps," said Cornell University Professor Karl Pillemer. Analysis of 63 studies, conducted between 1976 and 2018, with a total of 6,124 participants, assessed three types of anti-ageist interventions — education, intergenerational contact, and a combination of the two. The third approach was not only the most effective, but also inexpensive and easy to replicate. "Volunteer organizations and after-school programs should think about involving some of these methods to reduce ageist attitudes because they actually seem to work," Pillemer suggested.