In the movie Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby (portrayed by Guy Pierce) has anterograde amnesia, which prevents him from creating new memories. Shelby is able to cope with his disability through an extensive system of post-it notes, Polaroid photos and tattoos of “facts” he must be reminded of on a regular basis.
While Memento was a stellar work of fiction, it reminded me that millions around the world cope with memory loss due to diseases such as Alzheimer’s. For these individuals and their families, not being able to recall memories greatly impedes their lives. Microsoft has developed a new device called a “Sensecam,” that may lead to technology that helps people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of memory disorders record their day-to-day experiences, even if they can’t physically remember.
The Sensecam takes hundreds of pictures in a short period. When researchers began exploring it as a memory aid a few years ago, they had patients and caregivers look at all the pictures together.
[…]Once the system selects some photos from the hundreds taken, the caregiver winnows down the candidates, adding cues like audio from the voice recorder, verbal narration and brief text captions. The final product is a multimedia slide show on a tablet computer that allows the patient to dig deeper into highlighted parts of some images by tapping on the screen. The first tap plays audio, the second shows captions.
“The design is intended to give the patient the ability to engage actively with the experience instead of simply flipping through some pictures,” said Mr. Lee, the graduate student. Testing the system with the Reznicks and two other couples, he and Dr. Dey found that it helped patients recall events more vividly and with greater confidence than when they simply went through all of the images.
While researchers have experimented with the Sensecam as a memory aid, there are no plans to market it as such. Instead, the manufacturer plans to market the Sensecam as a device that enables wearers to upload photos and video to their favorite social media portals of choice – a “lifeblogging” aid, if you will. This research illustrates, however, that technology in the form of an external memory capture device can play a valuable role in helping to preserve one’s ability to remember events when the built-in, biological standby begins to fail.