Ryerson Alumni - 2018 Summer - 24

WHAT'S
THE

SECRET

SHARP MEMORY IN OLD AGE? How can we better
understand and support people with dementia?
As the oldest of the baby boomer generation settle
into their 70s, researchers at Ryerson University are
making important contributions to the fast-changing
field of aging and memory. From retina scans to detect
Alzheimer's disease, to research on how motivation
affects aging brains, to artwork inspired by data on
dementia patients, great minds at Ryerson are finding
innovative ways to support memory in old age, and
provide solutions to an age-old disease.
A retina scan for Alzheimer's
Eliav Shaked is looking up at a portrait of an elderly
man with advanced Alzheimer's disease. His pupils are
unusually small, his gray-blue irises opaque, without
detail. "They have an emptiness to them," says Shaked,
the founder and CEO of RetiSpec.
It's long been known that the eyes show signs of
Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia,
with "plaques" that build up in the brain noticeable in
images of the retina. But no one has yet created a test
to measure the complex combinations of eye changes
that could signify Alzheimer's. As other possibilities
for Alzheimer's screening, such as brain imaging or
lumbar punctures, remain too expensive to be commonly used or accessible, Alzheimer's is most often
diagnosed based on the symptoms it causes, once it's
already affecting how people recall and reason.
Researchers have found that the early biomarkers of
Alzheimer's begin to manifest in the eye years before
symptoms begin to show. With drugs that slow down
dementia expected on the market in the next 10 or 20
years, Shaked wants doctors to have the opportunity to
intervene before it's too late.
A biomedical engineer from Tel Aviv, Israel, Shaked

began working on a retina scan to diagnose Alzheimer's
in 2015. Six months ago, that work got a major boost,
thanks to support from the Biomedical Zone, an
office of biotech startups in downtown Toronto that's
a partnership between Ryerson University and St.
Michael's Hospital.
"Things have been happening so much faster since
we moved here," says Shaked. "It's been incredible."
The Biomedical Zone not only provides access to doctors and patients, but also to fellow engineers and
funding organizations-RetiSpec has received grants
from the Ontario Brain Institute and the Ontario
Centres of Excellence.
Shaked's team is currently designing a clinical study
of patients they'll follow for a year, to prove the simple
scan can detect some of the earliest signs of the disease.
The research hits home for Shaked. A close family friend with Alzheimer's just passed away. Shaked
remembers how helpless he felt when he was told not
to visit her as she wouldn't even recognize him. He'd
known her for decades; she was someone he'd joked
around with and deeply respected. "By your 80s, you're
likely either living with Alzheimer's or taking care of
someone who has Alzheimer's," he says. "It's an epidemic, and I want to be a part of the fight against it."
How motivation and interest can boost memory
Decades ago, memory was thought of like a machine-
data in, data out. But research has since shown that
memory is far more complicated than that. "It is very
much influenced by an individual's intentions, interests
and emotions," explains Julia Spaniol, director of the
Memory and Decision Processes lab in the Department
of Psychology at Ryerson University.
Spaniol and her graduate students are working on
several projects to show how these factors influence our
ability to recall information. In one, Liyana Swirsky, a
master's student, is researching how motivation can
help seniors with the reduction in 'memory selectivity'
that comes with age-seniors are less able to tune out
irrelevant information.
In the study, young adults and seniors above 60 were
shown names and faces. In the first stage of the study,
Swirsky asked each participant to press a button when
a repeating face came up, and to ignore the names. In
the second stage, she instructed participants to memorize the name-and-face pairings, but had mixed some
up. Compared to the younger adults, the older adults
had trouble remembering the new face-name pairings.
Then, Swirsky ran the test again, but this time, she
motivated the older and younger adults with points and
feedback. As a result, in the second test, seniors scored
as well as the younger adults in memorizing the new
name-face pairings.
The research supports similar studies elsewhere, as
well as Spaniol's previous research activities, including conducting functional MRI scans that showed
that older adults have greater activity in the prefrontal

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