Relative sparing of emotionally influenced memory in Alzheimer's disease

Studies suggest that emotionally influenced events enhance long-term memory . This study aimed to uncover whether this phenomenon exists in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) by comparing patients' performance with that of controls on a memory task. Overall, controls performed better than AD subjects on a dela yed recognition task of a story containing emotional elements (95.8+/-2.4% vs 66.6+/-.5%; mean+/-s.d.), respectively. Among AD subjects, there was rel ative sparing of emotionally influenced memory, which was not seen in contr ols because of a ceiling effect. Retention of the emotional phase df the st ory differed significantly from that of the neutral phases. These findings suggest that the influence of emotion on memory is spared, at least to some degree, in AD. NeuroReport 11:653-655 (C) 2000 Lippincott Williams & Wilki ns.