A dementia diagnosis turns the world upside down, not only for the person affected but also for their relatives, as brain function gradually declines. Those affected lose their ability to plan, remember things or behave appropriately. At the same time, their motor skills also deteriorate. Ultimately, dementia patients are no longer able to handle daily life alone and need comprehensive care. In Switzerland alone, more than 150,000 people share this fate, and each year a further 30,000 new cases are diagnosed.
To date, all attempts to find a drug to cure this disease have failed. Dementia, including Alzheimer’s – the most common of several forms of dementia – remains incurable. However, a clinical study carried out in Belgium with the involvement of ETH Zurich researcher Eling de Bruin has now shown for the first time that cognitive motor training improves both the cognitive and physical skills of significantly impaired dementia patients. A fitness game, known as “Exergame”, developed by the ETH Zurich spin-off Dividat was used in the study.
Better cognitive ability thanks to training
In 2015, a team of scientists led by ETH Zurich researcher Patrick Eggenberger showed that older people who train both body and mind simultaneously demonstrate better cognitive performance and can thereby also prevent cognitive impairment. However, this study was carried out on healthy subjects only.
“It has been suspected for some time that physical and cognitive training also have a positive effect on dementia,” explains de Bruin, who worked with Eggenberger at the Institute of Human Movement Sciences and Sport at ETH Zurich. “However, in the past it has been difficult to motivate dementia patients to undertake physical activity over extended periods.”
ETH spin-off combines exercise and fun
With a view to changing this, Eva van het Reve, a former ETH Zurich doctoral student, founded the spin-off Dividat in 2013 together with her PhD supervisor Eling de Bruin and another doctoral student. “We wanted to devise a customised training programme that would improve the lives of older people,” says van het Reve. Fun exercises were developed in order to encourage people who were already experiencing physical and cognitive impairments to participate in training, and the Senso training platform was born.
