News
June 2007
70 year olds reunite for study on mental decline
One thousand volunteers, all about 71 years old, converged in Edinburgh on 4 June to mark their participation in a study helping combat mental decline.Called The Disconnected Mind, this study will run until 2015 and is a major opportunity to inspire better treatments and to show how lifestyles, diet etc can delay the onset of mental decline.
The study is being performed by the University of Edinburgh and funded by Help the Aged. Alongside the study Help the Aged has released findings from its new survey of the UK public which reveals that mental decline ranks higher (41 per cent of responses) than any other concern about ageing.
The 4 June event occurs exactly 60 years to the day after the volunteers took part in the 1947 Scottish Mental Survey, which was a detailed national survey of the mental abilities of 70,000 Scottish 11 year olds that hasn't been repeated since. Over the next eight years the 1,000 volunteers will be re-examined to paint a detailed pictured of their mental development. The scientists will be using the latest scientific tools such as brain scans, DNA tests and lifestyle surveys.
Television actor Richard Wilson (from One Foot In The Grave), who was one of the original 11-year olds in the 1947 Scottish Mental Survey, said:
'It will be amazing to see what The Disconnected Mind uncovers about those people who, like me, took part in the original 1947 Scottish Mental Survey. As an actor I know that we often rely on intuition and guesswork to understand how life can affect an individual. The Disconnected Mind will remove the guesswork and really inform us about which life events and background factors most help or harm our mental development. The value of such knowledge to society and medicine will be immeasurable.'
More information on The Disconnected Mind can be found on the Help
the Aged website
Read advice on staying
mentally active on the Directgov website.