Neuroscience
07 Apr 2016
Imitation as therapy for Alzheimer’s patients
By K.E.D. Coan, Science Writer Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Alzheimer’s Association. There is no cure and no way to slow or prevent the illness. But, patients can still benefit from both physical and cognitive rehabilitation, and researchers are learning that mimicry may be a useful tool to help them regain lost abilities. “Alzheimer’s patients are still able to voluntarily imitate the movement of an object, as well as that of a human being” said Dr. Ambra Bisio. “If this ability is still in place, a patient could relearn how to perform actions that have become difficult due to the disease.” Dr. Ambra Bisio is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Experimental Medicine at the University of Genoa. She specializes in how the brain responds to movement, particularly somebody else’s movements. In a collaboration with Professor Thierry Pozzo at INSERM-U1093, she showed that Alzheimer’s patients can still mimic a simple gesture by a human or a moving dot on a computer screen, suggesting that such exercises may complement current therapeutic strategies. Their results were published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. Copying what someone else is doing is a basic […]
