SSE intervention in Brazil

1970.01.01

On November 23rd and 24th, 2010, I (Dr. Shigematsu) visited to Sao Paulo State University, Rio Claro, Brazil.

In the university, there is Prof. Sabastiao Gobbi. He immediately found that Square-Stepping Exercise (SSE) would be useful for his study when he saw SSE at first time at an international conference held in Japan, 2008.

Since then, Prof. Gobbi and I have been contacting and doing collaboration researches.

I did not have any chances to visit to Brazil; however, I visited there just after attending a research conference held in New Orleans, USA.

As you can see, elderly persons are doing SSE outside. They have many warm days in Sao Paulo. Now it is summer in Brazil. They start SSE from 7 o'clock in the morning to avoid humidity and hotness.

Prof. Gobbi and a researcher (Camila) would like to improve cognitive function of elderly people. Therefore, they do not usually allow the participants to teach step patterns each other. Each participant pays attention until he/she realizes the pattern. Because many participants concentrate, it was more silent than I expected. I had also expected that they added rhythms of samba with the SSE program; however, they did not. But, but, the participants enjoyed SSE and continued for a long duration.

Prof. Gobbi and Camila had also found effects of SSE in patients with Alzheimer's dementia in other research.