Therapist Assistant - THER 140 - Recreation Therapy Assistant: Principles & Practice I

In this two-part series, Angela Rippon and Dr. Chris van Tulleken travel the world in search of the latest science that could help us all stay young and healthy for longer.

This episode explores what can give brains a boost. In America, Angela tries out a new treatment that's proven to help memory and concentration. In Japan, a remarkable 100-year-old reveals the colorful foods that keep minds more active. Plus Chris discovers the best exercise we can do for our brains. At the cutting-edge of science, discover how injections of young people's blood may help beat dementia.

Vicky starts her search for choir members, meeting people with different types of dementia and at different stages. One of the first to join is former woodwork teacher Chris, whose frontotemperal dementia is leading to increasingly disinhibited behaviour. The youngest member is 31-year-old Dan, who was diagnosed with a rare form of genetic Alzheimer's two years ago. Dan's father died at 36, though at the time no one realised why. There's a risk that Dan's young twins will have inherited the faulty gene, and Dan seizes the opportunity to take part in a cutting-edge experiment in the hope that it will help find a cure in the future.

Vicky sets out to see the impact of music on people in the later stages of dementia. She visits a care home offering music therapy and sees how their unique approach is benefiting the people there. Four choir members take part in an unprecedented experiment when they are scanned at the University of Nottingham to see how the different parts of their brains communicate when listening to music despite the damage caused by their dementia. The three-month scientific study to see whether singing in the choir has any measurable physiological effect on them comes to an end, and Vicky announces that in a matter of weeks they are going to perform at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham in front of an audience of 2,000 people. However, it's not long before the very real challenges faced daily by the choir threaten to derail the entire project as members struggle to learn the new songs. With Vicky and choir master Mark De-Lisser driving them forward, can they pull it off?