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Perceptual false recognition in Alzheimer's disease
A E Budson1, R Desikan, K R Daffner
1Division of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. abudson@partners.org
Neuropsychology
|April 28, 2001
Summary
Patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) exhibit reduced recognition of novel objects, indicating that semantic memory deficits alone do not explain their lower false recognition rates. Gist information processing may also be impaired in AD.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neurodegenerative Diseases
Background:
- Patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) demonstrate lower false recognition of semantic associates compared to healthy older adults.
- This previous finding raises questions about whether semantic impairments contribute to altered memory processing in AD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if semantic impairments in AD patients account for their reduced false recognition.
- To examine false recognition of perceptually related novel objects with minimal semantic content in AD patients and healthy older adults.
Main Methods:
- Utilized corrected recognition scores to control for false alarms.
- Compared true and false recognition of novel objects between patients with probable AD and healthy older adults.
Main Results:
- Patients with probable AD showed lower levels of both true recognition and false recognition of novel objects compared to healthy older adults.
- Corrected recognition scores revealed this pattern.
Conclusions:
- The reduced false recognition of semantic associates in AD is not solely due to semantic memory deficits.
- Impaired development of gist information processing may also contribute to memory alterations in Alzheimer's disease (AD).