Chaotic Changes in Fingertip Pulse Waves and Psychological Effects of Reminiscence Therapy Intervention

Abstract

Population aging is a problem in developed countries today. Dementia, a general term that covers various disorders leading to disturbances in life caused by a decline in intellectual functions, is a severe health problem in older adults. Reminiscence therapy has been used to prevent dementia and the deterioration of symptoms. There are reports that reminiscence is effective, but no empirical studies using physiological indicators have been conducted yet. Therefore, the present study focused on chaos analysis of fingertip pulse waves, which are correlated with mental and physical health and can be measured simply and non-invasively. The present results indicated an increase in fingertip pulse-wave LLE and a decrease in negative psychological scores only in the retrieval group, indicating that recalling and talking about memories increased fingertip pulse-wave LLE and improved psychological indices, differently from mere vocalization. Since there are few studies that combine reminiscence and physiological indicators, further research is needed.