Bridging Neurosciences with Social Sciences

Bridging Neurosciences with Social Sciences

The Enriched environment in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease: towards a bio-chemical validation of the Montessori Methods in Dementia

Monica Marchese, PhD, CCRA

Research Fellow - St. Peter's Hospital

Juravinski Research Center

88 Maplewood Avenue,

Hamilton

Gail Elliot, BASc, MA, Assistant Director, Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging, McMaster University

     Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia in older adults, causes loss of memory, judgment and reasoning. There are no neuropsychological tests or invasive procedures that can provide a definitive AD diagnosis. To date there is no cure for AD and the drugs that are currently available only attenuate the symptoms.

     The use of animal models, replicating the Alzheimer’s pathology both temporally and morphologically, allows opening ‘windows’ as the disease itself progresses. The hope to achieve effective intervention therapies, and perhaps to cure AD, relies ultimately on the ability to find the missing link between neuropathological lesions and changes in cognition and behaviour.

     AD is a symptomatic disease. What if we focused first on this main aspect to find a way back to those aberrant bio-molecular roots? This ‘a rebours’ approach has been applied once again to the animal model’s world. The aim was to verify whether environmental modulators, not drugs, could elicit an effect on cognition and behaviour and, ultimately, on AD biochemistry. An enriched environment (EE), in laboratory terms, can be defined as improved housing conditions, increased social interactions and ad-hoc designed challenges. EE has produced a range of dramatic effects in mice models of AD. Researchers have observed improved sensory, cognitive and motor function, with a considerable reduction of the anxiety component.

     Not surprisingly, matching an EE protocol with chemical intervention would not only promote old memories’ recall but would also boost memory formation.

     Interestingly enough, an EE approach for individuals affected by AD seems already to exist in the Social Sciences.  The Montessori Method for DementiaTM addresses the cognitive and behavioural challenges afflicting AD patients by modulating the environment surrounding the individual.  Four classes of activities (every day life, sensorial, cognitive and social/cultural connections) constitute the focus of the method around which tools are built to provide tailored, highly supportive, interventions. Many of the paradigms utilized by the Montessori Methods (cued spatial mapping, sensory stimulation, social interaction, repetition of tasks after demonstration, exercise and so forth) would find a counterpart in some of the behavioural EE paradigms applied to animal models.

     Acquiring a task and repeating it would reinforce the concept of “use it”, in order not to lose it. It has been for example demonstrated, in a longitudinal study with a mouse model of AD, that the repetition of the Morris water maze task (a task normally utilized to evaluate cognitive impairment) would decrease the performance gap normally observed between disease-free animals and AD genes carriers.  In other words, outcomes were more positive if the mice repeated performance over time, regardless of disease status.  Moreover, AD animals reared in a socially enriched environment seem to decrease their level on anxiety and become more socially engaging. Similarly, mild-AD individuals enrolled in a resident-assisted Montessori programming (RAMP) would become successful leaders of a small group of more severely affected patients. Colorful tunnels, new objects to explore, running wheels and habituation time with the experimenters would translate into clinical practice using the Montessori Method (e.g. - practical and meaningful activities, physical exercise and respectful relationships with the caregivers and others).

     Evidence from the laboratory would suggest that modulation of the environmental factors could modify behaviours and cognition patterns and the bio-chemistry that is behind them. Is this what happens when individuals are enrolled in the Montessori program? Are the paradigms applied rewiring their brains to rescue their retrieval abilities? 

     Excerpts from doctors’ files, nursing homes and experts in the field would confirm that building and reinforcing new memories, following Maria Montessori’s paradigms, would provide the key to unlock a world of memories and recollections that perhaps have never been lost. 

      As the quest for biomarkers for AD progresses and new diagnostic tools are being tested, laboratory mice could come become once again handy to validate the Montessori Methods for DementiaTM as a behavioural a cognitive intervention, highlighting the molecular pathways and bio-chemical changes that we speculate might happen when Maria Montessori’s principles are applied to AD patients.