Photographic Memory

A wearable video camera may be able to slow the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Hopes for new drugs that would slow or stop the inexorable decline of Alzheimer’s patients have repeatedly foundered in recent years. In one example, Eli Lilly had to halt the trial of a drug designed to prevent the production of toxic proteins in the brain because patients’ cognition actually worsened while they were taking it. Scientists are now looking to the computer industry for alternative ways to help patients. One approach is centered on a small camera called SenseCam, worn like a necklace, that snaps photographs automatically throughout the day. The idea is to use the images not to replace memory but to stimulate it. Each photograph can serve as a cue, like Marcel Proust’s madeleine, tapping into the web of remembrances that collectively defines a person’s identity. SenseCam, developed by Microsoft and now marketed by a company called Vicon, uses a fish-eye lens to capture a wide-angle view. At regular intervals—say, every 30 seconds—a new image gets stored in the one-gigabyte solid-state memory. When the wearer moves from one room to another, a sensor that picks up the change in light triggers SenseCam to take a new photograph. Further, if a person walks by, an

infrared sensor detects the body heat and signals that it is time for another photo. The result is a thumbnail chronology of the minutiae of the wearer’s daily life. Later, patients or their caregivers pipe this electronic thumbnail record into a PC to display the images either individually or in chronological sequence.