Emotion processing for arousal and neutral content in Alzheimer's disease (original) (raw)
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Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD, 2013
Emotional material tends to be better retrieved in memory than neutral material. This emotional enhancement of memory may be related to the attentional effects of the amygdala's response to emotional stimuli. Because early neuropathological changes in Alzheimer's disease involve the amygdala and the hippocampus, it has been suggested that this effect is impaired in patients. However inconsistent results have been reported. The goal of our study was to evaluate the effects of emotion on picture recognition in patients affected by Alzheimer's disease, and to explore the link between this effect and the degree of amygdalar and hippocampal atrophy. Mild Alzheimer's disease patients (n = 15) and control participants (n = 20) performed an Old/New recognition task using pictures of negative, neutral, and positive emotional valence. Automated segmentation of their high-resolution T1 MRI scans was performed in order to obtain amygdalar and hippocampal volumes. Correlation ana...
Emotion processing in the visual and auditory domains by patients with Alzheimer's disease
Journal of the …, 1999
The ability to process emotional information was assessed in 42 individuals: 23 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 19 healthy elderly controls. Four tasks assessed the ability to recognize emotion in audiotaped voices, in drawings of emotional situations, and in videotaped vignettes displaying emotions in facial expression, gestures, and body movements. Hemispheric dominance for processing facial expressions of emotions was also examined. There were no consistent group differences in the ability to process emotion presented via the auditory domain (i.e., nonverbal sounds, such as crying or shrieking, and speech prosody). Controls were, however, significantly better than the AD patients in identifying emotions depicted in drawings of emotional situations and in videotaped scenes displaying faces, gestures, and body movements. These differences were maintained after statistically adjusting for the visuospatial abilities of the participants. After a statistical adjustment for abstraction ability, some of the tasks continued to differentiate the groups (e.g., the emotional drawings task, the videotaped displays of faces), but others did not. These results confirm and extend previous results indicating that AD patients do not have a primary deficit in the processing of emotion. They suggest that the difficulties of the AD patients in perceiving emotion are secondary to the cognitive impairments associated with AD. (JINS, 1999, 5, 32-40.)
Effects of Alzheimer disease on memory for verbal emotional information
Neuropsychologia, 2004
In healthy young and older adults, emotional information is often better remembered than neutral information. It is an open question, however, whether emotional memory enhancement is blunted or preserved in Alzheimer disease (AD). Prior studies of emotional memory in AD have included small samples of patients. In addition, studies that failed to find an enhancement effect in AD used stimuli lacking semantic coherence (e.g. lists of unrelated words, some that were emotional and others that were neutral). To circumvent these limitations, the present study examined a large number of AD patients (N = 80) and investigated whether AD patients would show better memory for a verbal description of an emotional event as compared to a neutral one. AD patients were equivalent to young and older control participants in rating the emotional descriptions for valence and arousal. Unlike the control groups, however, memory in AD patients did not benefit from the emotional narratives. We conclude that AD disrupts memory enhancement for at least some types of verbal emotional information.
The impact of aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional enhancement of memory
European neurology, 2014
Emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) has been a well-known phenomenon which corresponds to the advantage of emotional stimuli to be better recalled than neutral ones. Previous studies suggest that aging favours recollection of positive items and this pattern is disrupted in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Emotional valence of different stimulus modalities, i.e. pictures and words, may also have an effect on each other's memory performances. However, none of these were clearly studied in AD. This study aimed to evaluate how emotional valences of simultaneously presented stimuli affected recall in healthy young (YG, n = 30), healthy elderly (HE, n = 30) participants and in patients with AD (n = 30). A battery consisting of emotional words presented on emotional pictures was developed. An analysis of a 3 (Groups) × 3 (Emotional Valence of Picture) × 3 (Emotional Valence of Word) mixed ANOVA design was carried out. Patients with AD could process emotional information similarly to hea...
Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional memory
Emotion, 2002
Recall is typically better for emotional than for neutral stimuli. This enhancement is believed to rely on limbic regions. Memory is also better for neutral stimuli embedded in an emotional context. The neural substrate supporting this effect has not been thoroughly investigated but may include frontal lobe, as well as limbic circuits. Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in atrophy of limbic structures, whereas normal aging relatively spares limbic regions but affects prefrontal areas. The authors hypothesized that AD would reduce all enhancement effects, whereas aging would disproportionately affect enhancement based on emotional context. The results confirmed the authors' hypotheses: Young and older adults, but not AD patients, showed better memory for emotional versus neutral pictures and words. Older adults and AD patients showed no benefit from emotional context, whereas young adults remembered more items embedded in an emotional versus neutral context. Declarative memory for emotional stimuli (positive and negative) is typically better than memory for neu
Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders Extra, 2015
Aims: We examined the 'positivity effect' on memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia patients. Methods: In 109 subjects (28 controls, 32 with MCI, 27 with mild and 32 with moderate dementia), we investigated free recalls (immediate and delayed) and recognition of 12 pictures. Moreover, the emotional valence of the pictures perceived and the emotions evoked in the subjects were evaluated. Results: Patients with mild and moderate dementia recalled fewer pictures than those with MCI or the healthy controls. Across the groups, the positive pictures were better memorized and induced a higher arousal than the negative or neutral ones. Conclusions: Our findings indicate a positivity effect on memory performance and intensity of experience not only in healthy elderly patients but also in those with MCI or mild and moderate dementia. This effect does not refer to the compliance of the patients investigated since they perceived and experienced the pictures in the expected way.
The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, 2008
To investigate emotion discrimination abilities in healthy comparison subjects, patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), early and moderate Alzheimer disease (AD). Prospective study design. Outpatient memory clinic, Department of Psychiatry, Innsbruck, Austria. One hundred forty-one subjects older than 60 years were included in the study. Thirty-five subjects were classified as healthy comparison subjects, 51 subjects as MCI (21 subjects with amnestic MCI single domain, 31 subjects with amnestic MCI multiple domain), 32 subjects with early AD and 23 subjects with moderate AD. All subjects were tested on an extensive neuropsychological test battery including the Penn Emotion Recognition Tests and depression symptoms were assessed additionally. Healthy subjects and patients with MCI, early and moderate AD differed significantly in the recognition of all emotions and neutral faces combined. When separated by emotion, the authors found significant differences in emotion recognitio...