Effect of Brain Boosting Activities on Age-related Memory Impairment among Elderly Residing at Selected Old Age Homes, Jammu

Abstract

Background of the study: Every man‘s memory is his private literature. Memories are all we really own. According to Cicero memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. Most of us consider it to be wonderful to have a perfect memory. In general our memory serves amazingly well. Nevertheless at times we may have trouble recalling the name of someone we know well, where we read an interesting article, or the phone number of a close friend. There are many causes of forgetting. Memory problems worry younger clients and elderly clients. The severity depends on why you forget. Animal and clinical studies done showed that stress and ageing have detrimental effect on memory. According to dementia India report 2010, 3.7 million people in the country have Dementia or Age-related Memory Impairment. Like physical fitness, brain fitness can be improved by various challenging activities such as playing chess or bridge, dancing regularly, practicing yoga and tai chi and also by engaging in more structured computer based workouts. Researches show that brain stimulation can help prevent age-related cognitive decline, reverse behavioural assessment declines in dementia and Alzheimer‘s and also can improve normally functioning minds. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of brain boosting activities on age-related memory impairment among elderly residing at selected old age homes, Mangalore. Objectives: The objectives for the study were: (1) to identify the degree of age-related memory impairment among elderly in experimental and control group using memory rating scale; (2) to find the effect of brain boosting activities among elderly in experimental group in terms of gain in memory score; (3) to compare the degree of age-related memory impairment among elderly in experimental and control group after administration of brain boosting activities; (4) to find the association with age-related memory impairment and selected baseline characteristics (age, gender, education, previous occupation, leisure time activity, underlying diseases on treatment). Method: An evaluative approach with non-equivalent control group pre-test post-test design was used for the present study. The subjects consisted of 30 elderly from selected old age homes who were selected by purposive sampling technique. Main study was conducted in the month of August 2012. Informed consent was obtained prior to the data collection from all the elderly. Data was collected using memory rating scale before and after intervention. Brain boosting activities were taught and trained them for four weeks. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The result of this study showed that there was significant difference in pre-test and post-test memory score of elderly in the experimental group. The mean post-test memory score (77.95%) was higher than the pre-test memory score (56.36%) in experimental group. The difference in memory score of experimental group was statistically significant at 0.05 level of significance (t=7.707, p<0.05). There was statistically significant reduction of memory impairment in experimental group when compared to control group at 0.05 level (t=4.103, p<0.05). Association between baseline characteristics such as age, gender, religion, education, marital status, previous occupation, self-care abilities, leisure time activity, and underlying diseases on treatment and memory score tested using Fisher‘s exact test showed that there was significant association between memory score and baseline characteristics such as age, education, previous occupation and leisure time activity. Interpretation and conclusion: The findings revealed that memory score significantly increased in experimental group after brain boosting activities whereas the memory score of control group remained almost same. This study revealed that there was significant reduction in Age-related Memory Impairment of elderly after the brain boosting activities.ore.