Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 20, 2026

Examining the Characteristics of Episodic Memory using Event-related Potentials in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease
Published on: August 30, 2011
Everyday Memory in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: Fragmentary and Distorted
Karolina Sejunaite1, Claudia Lanza1, Matthias W Riepe1
1Division of Mental Health and Old Age Psychiatry, Psychiatry II, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
Background:
Errors of omission are an established hallmark of memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Much less is known about other memory errors in AD such as false memories.
Objective:
We investigated false memories in healthy elderly controls (HC; n = 23) and patients with AD (n = 20) using real-life tasks of watching news and commercials.
Methods:
Participants received a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment and were shown original news and commercials with a subsequent recognition task to assess veridical and false memories.
Results:
Subjective estimate of the number of errors were alike in HC and patients with AD. However, memory performance in both the news and the commercials task was significantly worse in patients with AD. Trail-Making Test and Symbol-Span Test were significant predictors of false memories on viewing news and commercials. In patients with AD, levels of Aβ1 - 42, but not levels of tau-protein were correlated with false memories in both tasks.
Conclusions:
Everyday life in patients with AD is impeded not due to the incompleteness of memory but also due to its distortions. Furthermore, it is hindered by the lack of awareness towards these deficits. False memory content in patients with AD is associated with Aβ42 levels in the CSF as a surrogate of the overall extent to which the brain has been affected by AD pathology. Future studies will need to address the impact of this duality of memory failure on everyday life of patients with AD and their proxies in greater detail.
More Related Videos
06:23The 4 Mountains Test: A Short Test of Spatial Memory with High Sensitivity for the Diagnosis of Pre-dementia Alzheimer's Disease
Published on: October 13, 2016
12:50Lesion Explorer: A Video-guided, Standardized Protocol for Accurate and Reliable MRI-derived Volumetrics in Alzheimer's Disease and Normal Elderly
Published on: April 14, 2014
Related Concept Videos
Alzheimer's Disease: Overview
The clinical diagnosis of AD hinges on the presence of memory and other cognitive impairments. Biomarkers, such as changes in Aβ...
False Memories
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information...
Amnesia
The severity and duration of memory loss vary depending on the type and underlying cause. Amnesia is classified into two main types: retrograde and anterograde.
Retrograde amnesia is marked by the loss of memories formed before the onset of the condition. Patients may recall distant past events but often forget those occurring shortly before the incident.
Anterograde...
Dissociative Amnesia
Role of Hippocampus in Memory
Dementia
The progression of dementia is generally gradual....