From Ottawa to Jaipur by bicycle
How Motiview helped a newcomer to Canada revisit his memories and bring a sense of familiarity and comfort to all those living with dementia.
Old memories in a new place
In a memory care community in Ottawa, there is a gentleman sitting quietly at the side of the room accompanied by his daughter. Whether it’s a language barrier, or a cultural reason, this man rarely participates in group activities.
Originally from India, he recently moved to Canada to be closer to his daughter when dementia was starting to impact his daily life. Moving into the care community provided him the support he needed, yet nothing seemed familiar and this made him withdraw from everyone around him.
Jaipur proved a different scenery than Canada. The clip is from the local video of Jaipur that you can find amongst thousands of videos in the Motiview library
A common situation
With various forms of dementia, individuals may perceive that they are living in an earlier time period of their lives or that things from their past feel more familiar to them than their new care community environment. To help combat this problem, the Engineers at Motitech developed Motiview, a special library of cycling videos to help those suffering with dementia.
Attaching Motiview to a special stationary exercise bike enables riders to revisit recognizable locations from around the world, without having to leave their home. By selecting movies with a high level of recollection, the rider can access old memories through sensory impressions of familiar surroundings. It encourages riders to share stories with those around them and the feelings of pride and joy that come through in these moments are inspiring.
During a Motiview session with others that lived with him, Carers found a Motiview video from Jaipur – where the man used to work. After putting this video on, his daughter asked him if he recognized the scenery he was seeing. And he certainly did – in fact, he asked for the video to be played over and over again. And each time, his eyes lit up, his pedaling pace quickened and he began to share stories in Hindi with his daughter. He cycled the entire 20 minute Motiview video and didn’t stop talking the entire time!
“It’s so wonderful to see my dad ‘wake-up’ like that!” cried his daughter.