Baycrest

Tackling loneliness among older adults Social isolation and loneliness have been linked to various conditions including depression, cognitive decline, and even dementia among older adults. To address this growing problem, Drs. Allison Sekuler and Rosanne Aleong are leading RRI scientists and the KL-CARE team in a collaboration with the Jewish Senior Living Group and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to implement and test a social robot, ElliQ, which relies on artificial intelligence to create a personalized experience. Created by an Israeli company, Intuition Robotics, the social companion aims to keep older adults engaged by suggesting activities and making it easy to connect with loved ones. Researchers are helping the company assess the robot's impact on keeping older adults engaged and its impact on their quality of life through its use by residents at the Terraces of Baycrest, Two Neptune Drive, Jewish Senior Living Group residences, and community-dwelling older adults in Toronto. "There is a loneliness epidemic among older adults, which can contribute to cognitive decline," says Dr. Sekuler, Vice-President, Research at Baycrest, RRI Senior Scientist, and CABHI Managing Director. "These partnerships enable us to see how cognitive AI systems integrated into robots can keep older adults connected, engaged, and cognitively fit." Boosting the brain's resilience to dementia There are activities people can do throughout their lifetime to boost the brain's resilience, known as cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve keeps the brain functioning well, despite the accumulated wear and tear of the aging process. For example, some people who showed fairly advanced signs of Alzheimer's disease in the brain, did not display any overt behavioural symptoms associated with the illness for many years. The ability to speak another language is an activity associated with building up this protective effect. Baycrest researchers were involved in a groundbreaking study that uncovered that people who were bilingual were able to delay the onset of dementia symptoms by four years. With support from CABHI's Industry Innovation Partnership Program (I 2 P 2 ), Dr. Jed Meltzer and his team are taking this research further by exploring how learning a second language through a mobile app could impact a person's memory and attention. Research participants are learning Spanish through the Duolingo app for 30 minutes each day, five days a week. Researchers are comparing these benefits to individuals who use a brain training app, BrainHQ, and individuals who aren't doing any training. "Keeping the brain engaged is an important way for adults to protect their brain health," says Dr. Meltzer, RRI Scientist and Canada Research Chair in Interventional Cognitive Neuroscience. "Our study aims to explore the short-term impacts these learning apps have on an older adult's cognition and whether these apps are a practical, alternative method to help older adults boost their cognitive reserve." 2018–2019 YEAR IN REVIEW 21 Visit the CABHI website to learn more.

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