How technology can help seniors improve cognition and memory

Septuagenarian Mohona Sikdar was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease four years ago. It can lead to depression and other related issues.” Last year, the Dignity Foundation—an NGO dealing with senior citizens across metros in India—moved its programmes online to help seniors stuck at home due to coronavirus restrictions. It’s time we took to technology as a leveller to make life comfortable for senior citizens.” She suggests the recent viral word game Wordle where you need to guess the right word in five or six attempts to keep the brain cells active. There are also games such as SharpBrains that comprises 25 different brain teasers and includes optical illusions; Tetris, a competitive game that serves the dual purpose of entertainment and also trains the brain; the online game Memozor, which boasts 24 versions of a matching card game and is great for testing memory, as well as other popular apps like Lumosity, Elevate Brain Training and NeuroNation which provide fun and engaging exercises and activities to enhance attention, perception, comprehension, memory and other cognitive skills. While mobile phone manufacturers are coming up with smartphones that are easier to use for seniors, boasting features such as large screens that can display magnified content, devices that can get significantly loud, and specialised features such as emergency shortcuts and simplified user interfaces, these are few and far between – and often priced higher than regular smartphone models.