IMPACT-intelligent memory pool assisted cognition tool: A cueing device for the memory impaired

Abstract

Memory impairment results from a variety of disease such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, brain trauma and Aging. These people are obsessed with their current state and emotions when dealing with their environment with deteriorating memory in them. There are about 30 million people worldwide afflicted with this instance. They lose their insight into their own condition, forgetting even their loved ones, disability to locate their residence and a myriad of other inabilities. Medicine has evolved fast enough but still there is not a definite method to diagnose or a treatment for their memory loss. The only finding has revealed is due to the depletion of the brain cells and loss in hormone secretion to carry sensory messages. The appropriate reason for this behavior of cells is a mystery unsolved. While not only losing their pensive they develop a cold behavior, socially and emotionally they become unbalanced. The most common form of assistance to them is by caregivers or life logging through writing their reminiscences, taking photos of their surrounding and their close people, mobile phones etc .While all these can be of some form of help to this people it will result only in more stress to their already damaged brain resulting in depression and other mental problems. The proposed tool IMPACT acts like a second brain with a repository of memory comprising of their previous experiences in multimedia format which is sensed and fetched when they come across a similar person or surrounding thus enabling them to recall their senses about that situation engaging cueing interaction. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.