Sit down, close your eyes, and try to remember how you got to where you are.
How easy is it for you to visualize the path you took today? How did you remember where to go? Maybe you know to always turn at an important landmark — the tree your mom planted, for example. Maybe there was a sign telling you the right direction.
Photo from iStock.
For people living with dementia, these navigational clues can be hard to read.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, about 5 million Americans live with some form of dementia. Dementia isn't a single disease — rather, it's a broad category of cognitive and neurological symptoms. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, but there are many others, including strokes or Parkinson's disease.
Dementia can interfere with many of the brain's mental processes, including spatial memory — the part of the brain that deals with navigation. This is why many people living with dementia may sometimes find it hard to get around, even in familiar places.
Part of our ability to navigate lies in the hippocampus; dementia can interfere with processes in this region. Image from Henry Gray/Wikimedia Commons.
Getting lost can be especially dangerous for people who live with advanced forms of dementia — it can mean forgetting how to get home and being exposed to the cold or rain or running into dangerous situations like wandering across a highway.
A possible solution for this problem lies in the designs of the very buildings we live in.
Woodside Place is an assisted-living community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that was built by Presbyterian SeniorCare in 1991.
Photo by Presbyterian SeniorCare, used with permission.
Though not as common today, in the 1980s, many facilities used physical or chemical restraints to prevent their residents from moving around.
Woodside, on the other hand, was specifically built and decorated to accommodate the natural wandering tendencies of people living with dementia.
Clever design decisions — like the use of color — help reinforce and strengthen the residents' spatial memory.
Many care spaces are designed like hospitals, fairly sterile and visually repetitive, white hallway after white hallway. By making the space more colorful, Woodside provides a quick intuitive reminder for residents to identify where they are.
Photo by Presbyterian SeniorCare, used with permission.
At Woodside, even the staff's uniforms are color-coded based on which wing they work in.
"[Patients] may not remember my name, but they remember she's green, she belongs to me," Carrie Chiusano, executive director of Presbyterian SeniorCare's dementia care center, explained.
Staff uniforms are color-coded. Photo by Presbyterian SeniorCare, used with permission.
Another strategy Woodside uses is to have decorations and signs that are meaningful and packed with emotional relevance.
Outside Woodside's green treehouse-themed wing is a large tree decoration. These cueing devices are more than just props; they serve as subtle visual reminders and landmarks for residents.
Woodside has also invested in signs and decorations that have personal significance to the residents. For example, many residents have decorated their doors and living spaces with photographs of themselves, family, and friends, so that they can more easily identify which room is theirs.
This can apply to more than just personal pictures; it can apply to meaningful symbols as well. Mary O'Malley, a Ph.D. student at Bournemouth University in England, told Upworthy of a care facility she visited where one area was decorated with generic pictures of water lilies and another was decorated with a painting of the city's history.
Water lilies vs. New York City. Which means more to you? Images from iStock.
Though the lilies were very pretty, O'Malley said the residents' emotional connection with their home city ultimately seemed to be a more useful navigation tool.
Researchers like O'Malley are constantly looking for ways to design living spaces specifically for people living with dementia.
Along with her supervisors, O'Malley is studying how people learn and remember routes and directions. She's taking a multidisciplinary approach, using psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and perhaps most importantly, direct conversations and feedback from people living with dementia.
Mary O'Malley conducting research at Bournemouth University. Photo from Philip Hartley/Bournemouth University.
O'Malley is interested in what type of spatial memory is most susceptible to memory loss.
For instance, we know that most older adults seem to work better with landmarks ("head toward the church") rather than plain directions ("turn right at the church"). O'Malley wants to see if this pattern holds true in people living with dementia as well. She's also studying the way our brains read maps to see if maps can be more user-friendly.
As we learn more about these designs, we can incorporate them not just into care facilities and hospitals, but into community spaces too.
While care facilities can be designed for residents with specific needs, it's estimated that about 60% of people living with Alzheimer's live within the larger community, rather than in assisted-living facilities.
"If you want to support people so that they remain in the community, then you should be making these changes to the community," O'Malley said.
These design decisions, such as the use of visual reinforcement and meaningful decoration, could be easily incorporated into the spaces we see around us every day. Next time you find yourself stuck trying to navigate, think about all the little visual cues you take for granted and how easy it would be to make them better for everyone.
There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
A woman in black long sleeve shirt stands in front of mirror.
Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."