I have just read an article on http://www.timesdailey.com/ that talks about engaging in games to stop or slow down Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia. The kind of games studied were crossword puzzles; something called Sudoku, something called mahjong along with solitaire. Some neuroscientists believe that stimulating the mind with these sorts of activities will stop or slow down the progress of dementia. Nintendo and Sony have both introduced electronic games to stimulate the minds of older adults.
I wonder if the same thing could be accomplished by operating a model railroad realistically. It seems to me that the realistic operation of a model railroad using rules and a car forwarding system would stimulate the mind as well or better than crossword puzzles do, and be a lot more fun to boot.
Seems to me that staving off Alzheimer’s is a matter of keeping the mind cranked up and operating. If planning, building and operating a model railroad based on a busy prototype can’t do that, nothing can.
I’ll admit that newer games (up through the Nintendo GameCube) have gotten easier… but have you played Zelda for the original NES? 15 years and I still haven’t beaten the fifth castle…
Get them to buy kits for you. Building kits requires fine motor skills. Regular “small finger work” improves manual dexterity and helps stave off arthritis.
Actually Nintendo has a game called brain training for its DS system. The game is actually fun to play it has lots of math problems and other things to stimulate the brain.
I’m not much of a gamer. However, I did enjoy Lemmings (especially the tougher levels) because it was more-or-less a problem/solving game - without the gory violence:
Here’s your “pieces” to work with
Now, how are you going to get them from Point A to Point B?
My favorite is still crosswords and Scrabble. I haven’t tackled Sudoku yet but I basically know the jist of the game.
I’ve never beaten Super Mario on the old Nintendo, that damn dragon gets me every time. I play a lot of car racing games on my Playstation2. If you want a quick burst of adrenaline try GT4, thats got to be the best car racing game available.
Getting to the question. Will model train operations help stimulate his mind? Short answer: maybe.
I’m going to answer this as an alternative health care practitioner who comes from a holistic perspective. Now there are legal issues here in play because our government who is totally unbiased and wise has deemed it prudent to make it illegal for me to a talk about specific diseases (which can only be discussed by an MD) or mention the word cure, as according to legal definition can only be the result of a drug, and to imply that anything that is not a drug is punishable by stiff fine ($250,000) and imprisonment. For instance, legally, water cannot cure dehydration. So I will talk about things I can talk about.
Six years ago my mother-in-law moved in with us. She was involved in a wreck and had lost her license. Doctors had a good idea of what was in play and she was sent to live with us showing symptoms of memory loss and getting angry at things that did not happen and confusing her dreams with everyday life. My wife’s siblings were sure that she was a half-block short of long-term care.
With a little experimentation we were able relieve the expression of inconsistencies in reality and she has since lived with us in a state of happy forgetfulness. She knows everyone by name, but will forget when she’s just had a bowl of ice cream, but remembering that she was in the mood for one, make herself a fifth serving. One of her favorite sayings is “That’s my memory.” Remember, she has been stable at this reduced state for 6 years.
There are two specific supplements we found helpful, neither of which you are likely to have heard of so I won’t waste space going into the details. It also would take me a lot of work, and I have found that the vast majority of Americans are neither willing to venture outside the medical paradigm, nor pay for something not directly covered by medical insurance. Most would rat
My understanding is that genetic and life-choices factors are far better predictors of how a person will succumb to anything but accident (this includes diseases caused by pathogens). We don’t yet have a good handle on Alzheimer’s, but we do know what causes some forms of dementia, the most common being a series of ongoing mini-strokes that slowly erode the brain’s ability to function properly. Cognitive function is the first to show, and that is the way my maternal grandmother ultimately met her end.
I think a healthy person, brain and body, should be struggling all the time to keep vital. Our immune systems contend all the time, and if one has the right attitude and ability, one should subject the body to physical struggle to keep muscle tone and bulk. Finally, engaging in challenging reading, learning, and the acquisition of new skills is a great way to stave off the effects of an aging brain.
Someone much wiser than I put it much more succinctly- “Use it, or lose it.”
I was reading an article about how nursing homes are buying Sony WII systems. The one where you hold 2 paddles and actually have to move around and swat at things. They said the patients love the golf, tennis and bowling games. It’s gets them up and moving around. An added bonus is that families are bringing the grand kids around more because they like playing video games with the grand parents.
I think that the US Americans should help other countries like South Africa, The Iraq and Asia learn geography because not all countries have quality education or maps, and they should.
(Google Miss South Carolina if you don’t get it. While she don’t have Dementia I thought this might be a fitting loke for some reason)
The article I read was about a statistical study that showed people who regularly engaged in three particular activities - crosswords, piano playing, and bridge playing, IIRC - had a lower incidence of Alzheimers. What parts of model railroading might help in a similar way, I’m not sure. I don’t know if operating a layout realistically is enough. If you had switching puzzles that might help - like a built in Timesaver. Regular repetitive activity like stopping the passenger train at the station every other lap might not. (Handlaying track might encourage early onset. [(-D])
My own suspicion is that a variety of activites that engage your critical thinking processes in actually doing something in non-repetitive puzzle solving ways is probably what helps.