{"id":7015,"date":"2019-04-11T08:25:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T06:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/interdem.org\/?p=7015"},"modified":"2019-05-21T13:16:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T11:16:17","slug":"wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/?p=7015","title":{"rendered":"My passion about dementia research: Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Marjolein\"<\/a>“Do you want another candy?” It was the third time my great-grandmother asked me this question. I was 11 years old and visited her with my father. Shortly before she had moved to a retirement home. She could no longer take good care of herself. My great-grandmother was then in her late 80s and a widow for a few years. I have few memories of her, but this visit is still in my mind. I was surprised that my great-grandmother seemed to have no idea that I had already received a candy, but I happily picked up one from the box every time.<\/p>\n

When I got older I wondered why it was this event that really stuck with me. Of course I was too small at the time to know what was going on with my great-grandmother. But what started with childlike wonder about this situation has taken on a different meaning over the years. During my psychology study in Maastricht I became aware of the tragic side of her memory loss. I like to think that this event played a role in my passion about dementia research. After all, wonder is the source of science. No one searches for new knowledge unless one is surprised at the way things are.<\/p>\n

History has repeated itself since my visit to my great-grandmother. I too, went to visit the great-grandmother of my children, who has dementia. And they too got the same question over and over again. Do you want a candy? With them I see the same wonder about her memory loss. Of course there is a chance that history will repeat itself again. Because of the complexity of dementia I do not believe there will be a cure for all. Possibly dementia will affect myself one day. What do I hope for then? I hope that despite my vulnerability I can feel at home and participate in society. I also hope that if I can no longer understand the world around me, there will be people who will try to understand and wonder about me.<\/p>\n

Marjolein de Vugt, professor psychosocial innovations in dementia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Do you want another candy?” It was the third time my great-grandmother asked me this question. I was 11 years old and visited her with my father. Shortly before she […] ","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,328],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7015"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7044,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions\/7044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}