VR may help combat dEmen-

About 100 join UK ‘time travel’ trials

LONDON, July 4, (RTRS): About 100 dementia sufferers in Britain will take part in government-backed trials using virtual reality to help recall lost memories, the firm behind the technology said on Tuesday.

Virtual Reality (VR) headsets allow people with dementia to watch films that take them to popular seaside resorts, a 1940s sweetshop or a 1950s street party, to recall thoughts and emotions and help them re-engage with relatives and carers.

“If people remember more of their past, remember more of themselves, it just helps with overall mental wellbeing,” Arfa Rehman, co-founder of Virtue, which created the software, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is testing the new form of reminiscence therapy — where films are played on a smartphone in an inexpensive virtual reality headset — in several hospitals and care homes across the country, she said.

Dementia is caused when the brain is damaged by strokes or diseases such as Alzheimer’s. People with dementia can suffer from memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language.

There are 850,000 people with dementia in Britain, with that number

world,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the FAO said in their joint report. (AFP) estimated to rise to 1 million by 2025, according to the Alzehimer’s Society, a charity.

Researchers have found that reminiscence therapy improves cognitive functions and reduces depressive symptoms in people with dementia and that it is more effective with those in care homes than those living independently.

Looking at, listening to and discussing objects, images and music from the past triggers memories, which participants enjoy.

“Several of us working on the project had a very positive experience with family and friends using VR,” said the NHS’s Michael Hurt, a dementia expert, who will be helping to implement the pilot in Walsall, a town in central England.

“All of the pilot areas are very keen to see if this software improves wellbeing, mood and sleep and if it reduces anxiety and agitation, as well as the potential to reduce some of the pain experienced in dementia.”

Trials over the next six months aim to find out the potential benefits of more regular use of the technology, said Rehman of Virtue, a social impact-focused business, which has won numerous awards since it was set up last year.

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Testosterone pushes men:

A single dose of testosterone steers men towards luxury brands of cars, watches, pens, or clothes which, like stag anglers and peacock tails, signal “status” to the female gender, scientists said Tuesday.

The sex hormone, it turns out, is a major influencer of male consumer behaviour, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

“This is likely because testosterone plays a role in behaviours that relate to social rank (in animals), and owning status products is a strategy to signal one’s rank within human social hierarchies,” study co-author Gideon Nave of the University of Pennsylvania told AFP.