Alzheimer's Patients: the Fifties Were Happier

I'd be happier there, too (WSJ photo)

A new aid for Alzheimer's patients is reminiscence therapy, [bold added]

a therapy that uses prompts from a person’s past—such as music, movies and photographs—to elicit memories and encourage conversation and engagement.

The 1950's are reconstructed in

Glenner Town Square, a new adult day-care center for dementia patients that is like entering a time warp. The 11 storefronts that surround an indoor park represent the time period from 1953 to 1961, when most of the patients were in the prime of their life.

Reminiscence therapy is not a cure, and the jury's out as to whether it even slows the advancement of the dieease:

Most participants showed no improvements in a series of cognitive tests done before and after the intervention. But they did become better at talking about autobiographical memories when triggered from older objects....The program is mostly geared toward patients who are in the early to moderate stages of dementia, who are typically living with family or at home with caregivers. Their family members or caretakers drop them off at the facility.

Glenner Town Square is an ingenious effort but only an intermediate treatment that will be superseded by virtual-reality rooms similar to Star Trek's holodeck minus the corporeal elements (touching a Studebaker instead of only viewing it).

There's nothing wrong with dementia sufferers reliving past times when they were happier. When the technology becomes available, we'll start doing it, too.