MEMORY AND EMOTIONS

Patients With Amnesia Still Feel Emotions, Despite Memory Loss

A new University of Iowa study offers some good news for caregivers and loved ones of individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Patients might forget a joke or a meaningful conversation -- but even so, the warm feelings associated with the experience can stick around and boost their mood.

For the study, published this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers showed individuals with memory loss clips of happy and sad movies. Although the participants couldn't recall what they had watched, they retained the emotions elicited by the clips. Justin Feinstein, lead study author and a student in the UI graduate programs of neuroscience and psychology, says the discovery has direct implications for Alzheimer's disease.

Feinstein conducted the study with UI neuroscience faculty members Daniel Tranel, Ph.D., UI professor of neurology and psychology, and Melissa Duff, Ph.D., UI assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders. The researchers studied five rare neurological patients with damage to their hippocampus, a part of the brain that's critical for transferring short-term memories into long-term storage. Damage to the hippocampus causes new memories to disappear. This same type of amnesia is an early sign of Alzheimer's disease.

Journal Reference:

Justin S. Feinstein, Melissa C. Duff, and Daniel Tranel. Sustained experience of emotion after loss of memory in patients with amnesia. PNAS, April 12, 2010 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914054107

ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2010)

WITHOUT MEMORY, IS THERE NOTHING OR IS THERE EVERYTHING? LIFE IS FOR LIVING

Alzheimer Person Reflection

HIS WORDS... It's full of these things... it's not good to just sit there and do nothing, because... well... it's going down... yeah... it's terrible all that...ohh forget it! (laughters)... life is for living

From my point of view, living with this condition brings you to enjoy the present, the now... We must reinforce this aspect when communicate with people with AD. We should talk with and listen to people with Alzheimer because they can teach us a lot about what living means. Why traveling back or foreward all time? Why not enjoy what we are and we have at present? We are not just memory, but subjective human beings that need memory to survive daily, to communicate with others... but we are still able of being ourselves, of enjoying life in spite of not having past memories... the person is still here, his subjectivity.

Let's learn about Alzheimer and humanity from another approach!

To watch the clip click here
Again... thanks Lucas!

EFFECTS OF AD ON MEMORY FOR VERBAL EMOTIONAL INFORMATION

Elizabeth A. Kensinger a,∗ , Alberta Anderson b , John H. Growdon b , Suzanne Corkin a
a
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, Building NE20-392,
77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
b
Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Do AD patients demonstrate a normal emotional memory enhancement effect?

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.
Conclusions: Deficits in the formation of new episodic memories are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Although numerous studies have investigated these declarative memory deficits, recent attention has been drawn to the modulatory effects of emotion on memory and the extent to which this modulation is disrupted with healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Studies to date have suggested that healthy aging leaves the emotional memory enhancement effect relatively intact. In contrast, while Alzheimer’s disease patients remain capable of processing emotional information and responding to emotional events, they do not show the same memory boost for emotional information as demonstrated by healthy older adults. The contrast between the performance of healthy older adults and Alzheimer’s disease patients likely results from the significant changes to limbic regions, including the amygdala, that accompany Alzheimer’s disease.

Source (pdf): Kensinger EA, Anderson A, Growdon JH, & Corkin S (2004). Effects of Alzheimer disease on memory for verbal emotional information. Neuropsychologia, 42, 791-800.

YOGA, COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS AND DEMENTIA

Yoga therapy can be used to treat those suffering from dementia, since there are no other effective means to counter this disease properly.

This point was highlighted during a support group meeting on Saturday at Sandhya Kirana, an old-age home, to help family members of persons with dementia. The meeting was organized by Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India.

Hari Prasad from Nimhans spoke on how yoga can be used as a therapy, and he gave a presentation on using this method properly. "Currently, there is no single approved treatment method for dementia. I suggest yoga may work," he said.
He highlighted two forms of yoga for dementia patients. One is the preventive method, which addresses risk factors, reduces depression, hypertension and memory impairment. The other is curative, which prevents progression of the disease, improves quality of life and cognition in mild and moderate stages. Depending on the patient and the person's background, the yoga method can be moderated. "Yoga has an overall benefit through various methods like asanas, pranayama, kriya, mudras and meditation. It helps strengthen muscles, improves respiration, etc. It leads to a tranquilized state of mind," he explained. Caretakers of dementia patients were also asked to do yoga. This is because they may get irritated and depressed while taking care of unresponsive patients.

"Yoga is open for all ages," he added.

Source: BANGALORE, Karnataka / The Times of India / April 12, 2009