Spring Break
The Daily OrangeProfessors relate memory loss to personal accounts
By Fred Hintz
Posted: 10/22/08, 4:52 AM EST Section: News
Social activity preserves more brain function than crossword puzzles and brain games, professor Martin Sliwinski told his audience Tuesday night.
The Tolley Humanities Forum focused on memory in aging, and featured Sliwinski, an experimental psychology professor at Syracuse University, and Chris Kennedy, head of SU's Creative Writing Program. The theme of this year's series is Being Human/Human Being.
Kennedy read from an unfinished manuscript of a poetic memoir he is writing about his experiences with his mother, who is 92 years old and in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease.
The Shemin Auditorium in the Shaffer Art Building was completely silent during Kennedy's reading, except for the laugh that came from the dark jokes Kennedy includes in the text.
"My mother's sense of humor is one of the few things that's stayed intact for her." Kennedy said. "I couldn't write this if it were a grim account of what happened."
Kennedy's manuscript was somber and meditative, and at the same time never lost its sense of humor. The audience laughed when Kennedy was reading just as often as they listened attentively.
Sliwinski talked about the relation between episodic memory, which is recollection of events, and semantic memory, which is knowledge of the world. He also spoke about the decline in the ability to remember with age. He referred to the research he has been doing at the Nottingham Nursing Home in Syracuse.
He prefaced his speech by saying he wasn't appealing to the audience members who "came to these sorts of things to learn how to improve their memory functions."
Despite his warning, he did give suggestions on the most effective ways to retain cognitive ability. He said social interaction, like dancing or playing cards, and physical activity have been shown to save the greatest amounts of cognitive ability.
Kennedy said that going to see his mother was "almost a zen experience."
The professors talked about how memory loss in old age prevented elderly people from understanding the story of their life up until the present.
"They have no choice but to live in the present." Sliwinski said.
The Tolley Forums are interdisciplinary forums meant to encourage discussion of basic topics from different scholarly areas. The forums involve one professor from the humanities and one professor from outside the humanities discussing topics central to what it means to be human.
Audience members were encouraged to interject with questions during the two-hour event. After each speaker had finished, Kennedy and Sliwinski shared a table in the front of the room to field the audience's questions together.
"It's meant to be a conversation," said Robert Van Gulick, William P. Tolley professor and organizer of the Tolley Humanities forum. "The point of this is to bring people from separate parts of the university and get them to talk about a common issue."
fahintz@syr.edu
The Tolley Humanities Forum focused on memory in aging, and featured Sliwinski, an experimental psychology professor at Syracuse University, and Chris Kennedy, head of SU's Creative Writing Program. The theme of this year's series is Being Human/Human Being.
Kennedy read from an unfinished manuscript of a poetic memoir he is writing about his experiences with his mother, who is 92 years old and in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease.
The Shemin Auditorium in the Shaffer Art Building was completely silent during Kennedy's reading, except for the laugh that came from the dark jokes Kennedy includes in the text.
"My mother's sense of humor is one of the few things that's stayed intact for her." Kennedy said. "I couldn't write this if it were a grim account of what happened."
Kennedy's manuscript was somber and meditative, and at the same time never lost its sense of humor. The audience laughed when Kennedy was reading just as often as they listened attentively.
Sliwinski talked about the relation between episodic memory, which is recollection of events, and semantic memory, which is knowledge of the world. He also spoke about the decline in the ability to remember with age. He referred to the research he has been doing at the Nottingham Nursing Home in Syracuse.
He prefaced his speech by saying he wasn't appealing to the audience members who "came to these sorts of things to learn how to improve their memory functions."
Despite his warning, he did give suggestions on the most effective ways to retain cognitive ability. He said social interaction, like dancing or playing cards, and physical activity have been shown to save the greatest amounts of cognitive ability.
Kennedy said that going to see his mother was "almost a zen experience."
The professors talked about how memory loss in old age prevented elderly people from understanding the story of their life up until the present.
"They have no choice but to live in the present." Sliwinski said.
The Tolley Forums are interdisciplinary forums meant to encourage discussion of basic topics from different scholarly areas. The forums involve one professor from the humanities and one professor from outside the humanities discussing topics central to what it means to be human.
Audience members were encouraged to interject with questions during the two-hour event. After each speaker had finished, Kennedy and Sliwinski shared a table in the front of the room to field the audience's questions together.
"It's meant to be a conversation," said Robert Van Gulick, William P. Tolley professor and organizer of the Tolley Humanities forum. "The point of this is to bring people from separate parts of the university and get them to talk about a common issue."
fahintz@syr.edu
Be the first to comment on this story