With no cure existing for Alzheimer’s disease, a University of Massachusetts professor and other researchers are working to understand the disease’s emotional impacts with the intent of easing the process for those diagnosed and their caregivers.

Rebecca Ready, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, is one of the first in the growing trend to ask early Alzheimer’s patients about their emotions, rather than relying on caregiver reports.

Ready, in collaboration with undergraduate research assistants at UMass, is researching neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. The ultimate goal of her mood assessment research is to collect information that can be used to improve the quality of life for Alzheimer’s patients as they struggle to deal with the uncertainty of the disease.

This past summer, Ready worked on analyzing data collected at Boston University, assessing whether emotional experiences are different for patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early Alzheimer’s disease than for age-matched healthy adults. Through her research, she concluded that negative moods were more severe for the Alzheimer’s patients, meaning more can be done to help reduce their negative moods.

Ready is leading a study this fall on mood regulation of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She has involved undergraduate research assistants, including Kelly Schatz and Maheen Chaudhry, who have been working with Ready for the past two years.

In their roles, Schatz and Chaudhry are recruiting UMass students and community volunteers into the UMass lab to watch videos that manipulate their emotions, and then assessing how the videos affect their moods and how long the moods last. The same procedure will then be extended to patients with mild Alzheimer’s, and the analysis of correlations between both groups’ reactions will ideally lead to further insight into the emotional aspects of the disease.

In Ready’s lab, research assistants are involved with designing the studies, providing them with a unique learning experience. In weekly meetings, research assistants discuss current articles and research with Ready, design the study collectively, recruit the participants, collect data and are sometimes involved in the analysis.
While each research assistant primarily focuses on one or two studies, they may be involved in components of various projects being conducted.

“It feels like everybody has an equal say and respects each other [within the research program],” said Schatz.
She said that the aim of these studies is to increase the quality of life for Alzheimer’s patients, and added that they also seek “to broaden the scope of knowledge about Alzheimer’s.”

By compiling this information, the overall goal is to move closer to possible intervention techniques, enabling insight into seeing the precursors and warning signs of the disease and then to work on preventative measures, as Schatz explained. The caregivers who assist patients with Alzheimer’s can then create environments that can help support the emotional impacts of the disease as it progresses and improve quality of life thereafter.

Schatz and Chaudhry agree that their involvement in this research has been a great academic opportunity, deepening their understanding of the research process and the area of neurodegenerative diseases. Schatz said that this research makes her feel more connected to what she learns in class.

“You can actually see what happens in research,” said Schatz. “It’s not just this myth of research that you hear about in class.”

In addition to the academic benefits of participating in this research, Chaudhry and Schatz agree that the exploration of these diseases and the first-hand interaction with those people inflicted has had an impact and made them more compassionate.

“It’s a great opportunity to talk to people affected by Alzheimer’s in various ways,” said Chaudhry.

“The consequences are so far reaching, and I didn’t realize that before working on the research,” said Schatz.

Similarly, Ready feels that the community connections are beneficial in that those affected by the disease and those researching the disease are motivated to help each other.  She further explained that interacting with people with Alzheimer’s “humanizes the disease,” preventing researchers from becoming too distant from what they study.

Schatz has a similar perspective about her interaction with Alzheimer’s patients.  “Before, the disease didn’t seem as real,” she said. “When you hear of this disease, you can tend to think of the person as the disease. Now I think of the patient as a person living with this disease.”

Schatz and Chaudhry will continue to work under Ready on studies in her areas of expertise. While they continue contributing to Ready’s research in Alzheimer’s, they study and experience other areas of geriatric neuropsychologist research, including Huntington’s Disease, and are further following Ready’s expanded research work which now includes evaluating the effectiveness of assessments of learning disabilities.

While Chaudhry acknowledges that applying to the research program at a large university like UMass may feel intimidating, she says that it’s worth the effort because the experience is valuable.

Meghan Connolly can be reached at [email protected].