Biographical and Personalized Cognitive Stimulation

We explore how biographical information can improve cognitive stimulation and design interactive platforms to support people with dementia, clinicians, and families.

Agile collection of information about people with dementia

Findings from our studies with formal and informal caregivers shows that there is a lack of knowledge of nursing home’s staf about their own patients. Sometimes, as we were told, staf does not know much more about the patients besides the name. This makes it harder for professionals to perform stimulation activities with people with dementia. These activities have a comproved benefit in the quality of life of people with dementia and caregivers and benefit from the usage of biographical materials which are not always easy to obtain. Part of our research is focused on new and optimized ways to collect materials and information to health professionals.

Improving current cognitive stimulation Activities

Cognitive stimulation sessions continue to rely on the traditional pencil and paper exercises and general-purpose cognitive computer programs. Informal caregivers also report to perform cognitive stimulation activities at home (46%), with 31.6% doing it 2-3 times a week or more, mainly using paper and pencil exercises (27.7%), or crosswords and Sudoku books (13%). Therefore part of our research is focused on developing new ways to perform traditional cognitive stimulation activities, exploring the potential of digital technologies.

Publications