Recap: Alzheimer's program is one from the art, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

A small group gathers at Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror in a hushed gallery at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

David Green, 84, takes one look and says, "Now there's a two-faced woman."

Tour guide Francesca Rosenberg immediately shoots back, "Are we all two-faced?" Her question draws laughter and a spontaneous "Oh, my" from Madeline Belgorod, a traditional woman who, according to her son Barry Belgorod, 54, never, ever, gives her age.

The group is off and running with a lively 10-minute discussion that veers from male chauvinism to Pablo Picasso's love life in 1932, the year the oil painting was completed.

What's remarkable about the exchange is Green, the older Belgorod and others in the group suffer from dementia, including Alzheimer's. Like more than 5 million people in the USA, they have a progressive brain disease that causes confusion and forgetfulness. It can isolate them to a world of narrowed possibilities, but on this September day, they're on a mind-expanding tour of works by master artists.

They've signed up for "Meet Me at MoMA," an interactive tour designed to make modern art accessible to people with early-stage dementia and their caregivers.

The museum launched the program in 2006, and 1,300 people have participated.

"What's nice is that a piece of art doesn't require any memory," says Rosenberg, MoMA's director of community and access programs. "It's right in front of you."

Today, the Museum of Modern Art will announce a plan to bring interactive art-appreciation programs to other museums and to nursing homes.

The museum will finance the project with a two-year, $450,000 grant from the MetLife Foundation.

The project takes a revolutionary approach to Alzheimer's, one that increasingly has a solid foundation in the world of neuroscience.

"Ten years ago, people would have said there is nothing we can do when someone gets a progressive brain disease," says Bruce Miller, a spokesman for the Alzheimer's Association and a neurologist at the University of California-San Francisco.

'Something new every time'

Preliminary research suggests mentally stimulating activities, such as this tour, might offer benefits to people with dementia.

But can such activities really roll back memory loss as some animal studies suggest?

No one knows for sure, but if you ask Green, a former vice president and accounting professor at New York's Baruch College, why he comes to the MoMA tour every month, he says this: "I learn something new every time."

People with Alzheimer's typically find it difficult to remember appointments or to find the words they need to speak fluidly.

Jessica Willis, 41, says the MoMA program helps her mother, Ann Willis, 83, follow the sometimes fast-paced discussion about modern art. Jessica says her mother, who was diagnosed about five years ago with Alzheimer's, will clam up when she feels insecure about her memory.

The fear of making a mistake often leads to anxiety in a new situation, says Robert Butler, director of the New York-based International Longevity Center-USA. He says Alzheimer's affects different parts of the brain, including the one that controls language. In the early stages, people with Alzheimer's realize they're having trouble and can freeze up.

"The patient with Alzheimer's is not unaware that something terrible is happening to them. It can be very frightening."

But Rosenberg provides the conversational glue that helps keep patients and caregivers focused. At this moment they are focused on a painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She stops the group in front of La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge and asks whether anyone knows where the scene takes place.

"A dance hall," Willis calls out.

Rosenberg tells the group Toulouse-Lautrec has captured the scene at a famous dance hall in Paris. She throws in some history, some art appreciation and even some humor, but she never talks down to the people.

The atmosphere gives Willis the confidence to speak up. "Once she feels part of the group, the fear goes away," her daughter, Jessica, says.

Instilling confidence

The special tours take place on a day when the museum is closed to the public. The quiet may help people with dementia stay focused and access memories.

Barry Belgorod says his mother was withdrawn on the first few tours, but Rosenberg and other staffers are very good at repeating information so patients don't have to remember for very long something that was just said.

"All of a sudden it clicked," he says. "She was voicing opinions."

She had earned a fine-arts degree in college, and some of that knowledge was still there — untouched by Alzheimer's. For example, on one tour, the art educator asked the group what they thought of a Picasso painting.

"Mother said it was an example of cubism. Everyone in the group was stunned."

Alzheimer's affects recent memory first. Only in the later stages does it begin to erase memory laid down long ago, says Marilyn Albert, an Alzheimer's expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The program at the MoMA draws on that long-term memory, and that probably makes people on the tour feel more confident, she says.

Benefits seen in mice

But the tours, designed for people with early- to moderate-stage dementia, won't work for everyone, Albert says. Patients with more advanced disease may find the tour frightening or disorienting. People with severe Alzheimer's often lose the ability to talk and may forget where they are or why they are on the tour, she says.

Scientists such as Gary Arendash at the University of South Florida in Tampa think enriched activities may be good for the brain — even a brain that's already in the first stages of the disease.

When mice that already had developed an Alzheimer's-like disease were placed in an enriched environment three times a week, they began to regain lost function, he says. They could remember and find an underwater platform easily.

The stimulating environment of lots of toys and mazes seems to roll back or reverse memory loss, at least for mice.

Could programs such as the one at the MoMA do the same for humans with Alzheimer's?

"Whether or not this improves memory or attention, it seems like a very positive experience," says Mary Sano, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

She says dementia patients seem calm, enjoy the tour, and many will participate in the discussions.

But the program also is designed to help caregivers. Rosenberg says.

Seventy percent of all people with Alzheimer's live at home. And the 24/7 care that sometimes is required can lead to depression and burnout, she says.

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