#DEMENTIA EXPERT JOHN ZEISEL OFFERS “HOPEFUL AGING”

John Zeisel, PhD, is the founder of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care and the author of I’m Still Here:  A New Philosophy in Alzheimer’s Care.   Photo Credit Smart Planet Daily

Zeisel is well known for his development of unique approaches to treating Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related dementias without drugs, focusing on the arts and creativity instead.

A recent PBS special, Hopeful Aging, addressed the issues of helping the brain to age gracefully.

Regarding the brain’s central role in our lives, on a Q & A interview with Smartplanet, Ziesel had this to say:  “The brain’s central role in our lives from the day we’re born until the day we die is to figure things out.  Our brains are made to be creative.  That’s the main reason we exist.

“Creative means discovery, creative means learning, creative means invention, creative means comprehension.  We’re always in search of understanding.”

The sociologist added that “. . . the brain needs meaningful sustenance.  You can’t learn, be innovative, discover, be creative with banality.   Playing bingo isn’t going to cut it.  It’s not interesting enough.

“Looking at a Matisse and saying, ‘What is this painting about?’—that’s interesting enough.”

Sudoku and crossword puzzles don’t do it, either.  “You have to have meaning in your life.  If it’s meaningful, it will stimulate you.

“The meaning is the energy.

“The meaning is the gas in the car.”

Beyond a meaningful and creative engagement with life, Ziesel urges sleep, diet and exercise to help our brains age well.  “All of our organs are connected, and we know that the best thing for every one of our organs, including our brain, is to sleep enough, exercise and manage what we put in our bodies.”

Asked why he feels hopeful aging is important, he replied, “Up until today, dementia has been defined as unhealthy aging, as ‘sick’ aging.  This puts 50% of people over age 85, 25% of people over 75 and 5% of people over 65 in a group that is considered abnormal, unhealthy, and unsuccessful.

“So we’re condemning this large number of people who have dementia or cognitive decline as sub-human, in a sense.

“Given the high percentage of people who develop dementia as (they) age, we’re basically saying we all have no hope.  Without hope, we don’t have a life worth living because it becomes hopeless.

“’Hopeful aging’ is an approach based on the idea that whether you have a dementia or not, whether you have cognitive decline or not, we can have hope, we can have a quality of life and we can have a life worth living.”

Source:   Smartplanet Daily, July 8, 2013 

REAL MARTIAN LANDSCAPE PICTURED IN LACUNA PASSAGE, A NEW VIDEO GAME

A screenshot of Martian scenery from a video game currently under development   Image credit Tyler Owen/Random Seed Games, photos from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment)

As was observed at the recent South by Southwest conference in Austin Texas, virtual exploration games and real-life space exploration capture the imagination for the same reasons:  Game designers said their excitement about exploration is closely linked to their desire to create virtual worlds for others to explore.

For those of us who’ll never actually set foot on Mars, comes the opportunity to do so virtually through the embodiment of Jessica Rainer,

an astronaut tasked with exploring the Red Planet to find out why the previous expedition had disappeared.

Jessica is the product of Tyler Owen’s imagination and enthusiasm.  Shortly after graduating from college in 2010, Owen founded Random Seed Games as a creative and independent design outlet specializing in unique gaming experiences for any platform.

All of the scenery used in his Lacuna Passage is indeed unique, in that it’s the real surface of Mars as recorded by NASA’s HiRise.

Owen will let players follow Jessica roam an authentic 25 square-mile section of Mars.  He explains that using HiRise was almost a necessity:  “I started this project as a single developer working in my free time.  In order to create an open world game with the scale that I wanted, it was almost impossible to create all the geography by hand.

“I started researching the use of actual Mars satellite data, and it seemed like a great solution to my problem.”

Because the Mars environment functions as a character in the game, it needs a great deal of detail to be authentic.  The terrain and weather events, such as Martian dust devils, will be recreated as faithfully as possible.

In regard to depicting reality, Owen said, “I think it helps add a level of real depth to the exploration in knowing that most of the features actually exist on another planet.”

LeVar Burton, who played Geordie LaForge of Star Trek:  The Next Generation, was one of the prominent panelists at the Austin conference.  He observed that some video games set in space would benefit from being less about violence and shooting and more about building experiences and keeping calm and using imagination to progress a storyline.

It sounds like Lacuna Passage is just what he’s talking about.

Source:  Discovery News, March 18, 2013    randomseedgames.com