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Updated: Oct 26, 2025
Examining the Characteristics of Episodic Memory using Event-related Potentials in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease
Published on: August 30, 2011
Lower-Resolution Retrieval of Scenes in Older Adults With Subjective Cognitive Decline
Adriana L Ruiz-Rizzo1, Patrick J Pruitt2, Kathrin Finke1,3
1Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Objective:
Scenes with more perceptual detail can help detect subtle memory deficits more than scenes with less detail. Here, we investigated whether older adults with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) show less brain activation and more memory deficits to scenes with more (vs. scenes with less) perceptual detail compared to controls (CON).
Method:
In 37 healthy older adults (SCD: 16), we measured blood oxygenation level-dependent-functional magnetic resonance imaging during encoding and behavioral performance during retrieval.
Results:
During encoding, higher activation to scenes with more (vs. less) perceptual detail in the parahippocampal place area predicted better memory performance in SCD and CON. During retrieval, superior performance for new scenes with more (vs. less) perceptual detail was significantly more pronounced in CON than inSCD.
Conclusions:
Together, these results suggest a present, but attenuated benefit from perceptual detail for memory retrieval in SCD. Memory complaints in SCD might, thus, refer to a decreased availability of perceptual detail of previously encoded stimuli.
