handling Alzheimer's, muscle memory, and golf?!

OK, insert golfer joke here (if you need to)...

Once you get past that, here's Matthew Futterman in the WSJ on something really cool...

Millions of golf enthusiasts who will watch the Masters Tournament this weekend have waxed endlessly about the game's mystical power and its hold on the human mind. A handful of people with Alzheimer's disease, no longer able to dress or nourish themselves without assistance, are proving them right....

Anyone who has dealt with people suffering from mid- to late-stage Alzheimer's knows how difficult it can be to transport someone from fear and confusion to contentment and lucidity. But at Silverado, caregivers have stumbled onto a technique that works nearly every time -- a golf outing. They run through a series of putting drills, knocking the ball around with the wonder of small children playing the game for the first time, which is how many of them experience it each week. For those who played the game when they were younger, swinging a club often sparks a startling transformation, however fleeting, that can make them seem like regular old folks again.

Experts in Alzheimer's say these weekly golf outings illustrate an individualized method of an increasingly popular treatment known as behavioral therapy....Rather than providing the same series of experiences to every patient, caregivers have begun to search for activities patients enjoyed when they were younger, and to allow the patients to experience them again.

"This is motor memory for these people, and usually you don't lose that," said Carl Cotman, a professor of neurology at the University of California at Irvine....

Silverado and other assisted-living facilities often use activities like dancing or playing music to stimulate their residents. Like golf, such activities have proved helpful in both making people with dementia feel competent and generating periods of lucidity.

The problem is that personalizing activities for each Alzheimer's patient can be expensive. And playing sports has usually been deemed too difficult, since it often requires a level of balance and coordination -- think of riding a bicycle or hitting a tennis ball -- that people in the later stages of dementia no longer possess.

The golf swing, however, shows staying power in the human mind....

The rule for memory among brain specialists is "first in, last out." The things we learn first -- our names, for instance -- are the memories we hold on to the longest....Skills like swinging a golf club or playing a musical instrument are part of what is referred to as implicit or procedural memory, which is centered in the cerebellum and other areas of the brain. These are often some of the last memories Alzheimer's patients lose.

Push Alzheimer's sufferers to remember or recognize things they no longer do, and they will often become agitated, as most people do when they are being forced to understand something that is confusing. But give them an activity that once brought about true pleasure, and the agitation can dissipate, their minds can clear, and memories related to that activity can return....

No one had thought to take the residents on an outing to a real golf course until Maryam Mahbod, an administrator, met a golf professional named Gerry Benton at a Bay Area concert last year....Mr. Benton, an easygoing Californian with a yin-yang stud in his left ear, thought even a bad day on the golf course would beat another afternoon in an assisted-living facility.

Before they arrived at Deep Cliff Golf Course for the first time, Mr. Benton set up a series of drills on the practice green that he uses to teach young children, such as a tic-tac-toe grid and a croquet-like series of arches. He said he wasn't surprised by the physical abilities of the Alzheimer's sufferers....