Posted on 04/08/2009 4:55:11 PM PDT by Canticle_of_Deborah
Millions of golf enthusiasts who will watch the Masters Tournament this weekend have waxed endlessly about the game's mystical power and its hold on the human mind. A handful of people with Alzheimer's disease, no longer able to dress or nourish themselves without assistance, are proving them right.
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Anyone who has dealt with people suffering from mid- to late-stage Alzheimer's knows how difficult it can be to transport someone from fear and confusion to contentment and lucidity. But at Silverado, caregivers have stumbled onto a technique that works nearly every time -- a golf outing. They run through a series of putting drills, knocking the ball around with the wonder of small children playing the game for the first time, which is how many of them experience it each week. For those who played the game when they were younger, swinging a club often sparks a startling transformation, however fleeting, that can make them seem like regular old folks again.
Experts in Alzheimer's say these weekly golf outings illustrate an individualized method of an increasingly popular treatment known as behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy has been around for more than a decade, but personalizing the treatment to a patient's interests is less common. Rather than providing the same series of experiences to every patient, caregivers have begun to search for activities patients enjoyed when they were younger, and to allow the patients to experience them again.
"This is motor memory for these people, and usually you don't lose that," said Carl Cotman, a professor of neurology at the University of California at Irvine. Dr. Cotman, who has done research on treatment programs at assisted-living facilities throughout the country, said structured, individually focused experiences, especially ones that include off-site exercise like the golf outing, are rare.
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Just ordered a new computer! Got a quad core and GTX280. Should be here in a few weeks.....C
One core to feed the GTX 280, three cores to run consoles to to run SMP (if you can get it to work).
You will have an incredible system.
David Parks has a folding farm with NVidia GPUs that is just pumping out the points. Add in another GTX 280 (and a new power supply) and you will rise to #2 on the team in no time.
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=168301
It’s all good. GPU is posting results: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=168301
Still have 3 cores crankin’ away and have not completed one unit in 24 hrs......
What ever you do, don’t double dog dare me to get a second 280.......C
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