Abstract
Learning therapy is a kind of non-drug therapy for dementia elders. It ameliorates, stops or slows the progress of dementia symptoms. Its effectiveness is observed not only in the functional recovery of intelligence but also in that of emotion. The recovery of intelligence is quantified by indices measured by tests similar to intelligence tests. On the other hand, the recovery of emotion has been a matter of subjective impression shared by staffs in nursing homes. We, thus, attempted to quantify the recovery of emotion by measuring smile intensity. We recorded movies of elders undergoing the learning therapy across a year, and developed an image analysis program that can measure the smile intensity of elder people.
