ULHT/HEI-Lab - Digital Human- Environment Interaction Lab

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http://hdl.handle.net/10437/12390

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Percorrer ULHT/HEI-Lab - Digital Human- Environment Interaction Lab por assunto "AGEING"

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    Depression, Social Support, Executive Functioning, Functionality, and Quality of Life in Institutionalized Elderly People
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2019-12) Ribeiro, Anabela; Rosa, Beatriz; Oliveira, Jorge; Lopes, Paulo Jorge Ferreira; HEI-LAB (FCT) - Digital Laboratories for Environments and Human Interactions
    Aim: Our aim was to study the executive functioning, functionality, and quality of life of institutionalized old aged persons and to determine the potential roles of self-reported depression and satisfaction with social support on these domains. Method: The sample comprised 36 volunteers (13 males and 23 females) aged between 71 and 94 years. The measures used consisted of well-established battery of neuropsychological tests. A comparative study was performed. Results: Participants with depressive symptoms shown impaired executive functioning. Cognitive flexibility, functionality in instrumental activities of daily living, and quality of life are more affected in participants with higher levels of depression that also report higher levels of satisfaction with social support. Conclusion: This result is intriguing and may highlight the relevance of considering not only depression, but also factors related to social isolation and loneliness in the explanation of cognitive performance, functionality, and quality of life.
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    Virtual reality-based cognitive stimulation on people with mild to moderate dementia due to alzheimer’s disease : a randomized controlled trial
    (MDPI, 2021) Oliveira, Jorge; Gamito, Pedro; Souto, Maria Teresa Soares; Dias, Ana Rita Conde; Ferreira, Maria; Corotnean, Tatiana; Fernandes, Adriano; Silva, Henrique; Neto, Teresa; HEI-LAB (FCT) - Digital Laboratories for Environments and Human Interactions
    The use of ecologically oriented approaches with virtual reality (VR) depicting instrumen-tal activities of daily living (IADL) is a promising approach for intervention on acquired brain inju-ries. However, results of such an approach on dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are still lacking. This research reports on a pilot randomized controlled trial that aims to explore the effect of cognitive stimulation reproducing several IADL in VR on people with mild to moderate dementia caused by AD. Patients are being recruited from residential care homes of Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Amadora (SCMA) which is a relevant non-profit social and healthcare provider in Portugal. This intervention lasts 2 months with a total of 10 sessions (2 sessions/week). Neuropsy-chological assessment is carried out at baseline and follow-up using established neuropsychological instruments for assessing memory, attention and executive functions. The sample consisted of 17 patients of both genders randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The prelimi-nary results show an improvement in the overall cognitive function in the experimental group, which suggest this approach to be effective for neurocognitive stimulation for older adults with dementia, contributing to maintain cognitive function in AD.