This one is more of an announcement and a personal blog entry. Today marks the start of a very exciting part of my life. I start on my journey as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Twente, Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social sciences (BMS). Its a really privilege and honour that I can conduct my own research and steer the direction of my own work. I have to give thanks to the EU Commission and the Horizon 2020 program for believing in my idea of improving the health and well-being of elder adults through motor learning and meditation.

This blog will therefore also be used as a way to reach out to the public in terms of broadcasting result, reaching significant milestones, reflections, video blogs etc.

I would like to communicate abit about the upcoming project – it is called ‘Individualised Cognitive and Motor learning for the Elderly (ICOME)’ and the innovation is to provide a management solution to the ageing demographics across Europe and the world, by creating an evidence-based approach with high efficacy.

This is realised with a three-stage approach to investigate and provide a viable solution. In the first stage, historical and current theoretical issues with the quantification of motor learning development in elder adults In the second stage, an integrated neurocognitive model of motor learning representation for the elderly, using supervised machine learning with electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioural data will be created to predict cognitive and motor states. Lastly, individualised intervention with two different forms of meditation is piloted to obtain greater learning outcomes in a shorter timeframe for the elderly. It is expected that elder adults with individualised training will gain benefits such as improved balance control for falls prevention.

Figure 2_MSCA_2019_ICOME
Figure 2_MSCA_2019_ICOME

This is an important direction of work for the EU and also for the rest of the world as we now have to face with an ageing population where we can expect most countries around the world to have >50% of the population with above 65 year olds’. This means that we need management solutions for maintaining their health and well-being, to be able to function at a high capacity with increasing functional capacities. This is the gap and that the project hopes to be able to bring insight to.

I look forward to communicating more of the progress of the work through this platform and others.