Alzheimer's Patients Remember Emotions Even After Associated Memories Of Events Have Faded

Recent findings published in the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology show that long after the memories have vanished, Alzheimer's patients can still feel the emotions.

"This confirms that the emotional life of an Alzheimer's patient is alive and well," said lead study author Edmarie Guzmán-Vélez, a doctoral student in clinical psychology, a Dean's Graduate Research Fellow, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, in a news release.

For the study, researchers invited 17 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 17 healthy comparison participants to view 20 minutes of sad and then happy movies. These clips triggered expected emotions of both tears and laughter.

About five minutes into the movies, researchers then gave the participants a memory test to see if they could recall what they had just seen. As expected, the Alzheimer's disease participants remembered significantly less information. However, the less they remembered did not mean they did not hold onto quite strong feelings of sadness or happiness.

This shows that forgotten events can continue to exert profound influences on patients long after many memories have fled.

"Our findings should empower caregivers by showing them that their actions toward patients really do matter," Guzmán-Vélez concluded. "Frequent visits and social interactions, exercise, music, dance, jokes, and serving patients their favorite foods are all simple things that can have a lasting emotional impact on a patient's quality of life and subjective well-being."