Alzheimer's Club

CHICAGO -- Shakespeare's aging King Lear loses his mind in the bard's great tragedy, but can acting out a play help senior citizens keep the same thing from happening to them?

For the participants of one acting class, who are in their 70s and 80s, there will be no audience and little applause. But they rehearse as actors do, and for the same reason -- they don't want to forget.

Except it's Alzheimer's disease they fear.

"I had a sister-in-law that died of Alzheimer's, and I saw her deteriorate for the last five years of her life," said Dorothy Hennet, a participant in the acting class.

"When I go shopping, I write down what I need. Sometimes, I forget the list," participant Ann Datcu said.

"Alzheimer's is, I think, one of the worst diseases that you could have," said Mary Seymour, who is also taking part in the acting class.

The class is part of a groundbreaking study, done in Chicago, of how the art of acting somehow seems to keep Alzheimer's disease from taking hold.

"We found significant improvement in word recall and in comprehension," said Helga Noice, a psychologist with Elmhurst College.

She and her husband, Tony, who is a professional actor, have studied acting's affect on the brain for 15 years.

"It either gives your brain some reserves, so that you have some cognitive reserve that you can draw on later, or it just makes the brain function more efficiently," Noice said.

And in just about any acting class, no matter how old the actors are, you can see the process at work, NBC5's Nesita Kwan reported.

There are words to memorize, but just as important is the feeling of playing the part, moving as the character would and reacting to the other players.

And that's so complex, according to the Noices, that the brain gets stronger and more agile as a result.

In the study, acting lessons improved a senior's word recall by 17 percent, total memory span by 5 percent, and the ability to solve problems by a whopping 55 percent.

"Chances are that the brains will stay healthy and they will be more resistant to Alzheimer's," Tony Noice said.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," wrote Shakespeare. If that's the case, then the classmates in the Noices' study hope the last act of their lives will be immeasurably better because of an acting class.

"I have it now, and I don't want to lose it," Seymour said.

The Noices now have a federal grant to expand their acting studies into low-income areas. Eventually, they hope to train the activity directors at senior centers to continue the acting classes.

Source: Acting Study Shows Hope For Preventing Alzheimer's Disease: Chicago-Based Psychologist Gets Grant To Further Research. NBC5.com (29 June 2006) [FullText]