Washington, April 13 (Inditop.com) Alzheimer’s patients might forget a joke or a meaningful conversation –but the warm feelings associated with the experience can stick around and boost their mood, says a new study.
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, doctoral student in neuropsychology at the University of Iowa (U-I) and lead study author, says the discovery has direct implications for Alzheimer’s disease.
“A simple visit or phone call from family members might have a lingering positive influence on a patient’s happiness even though the patient may quickly forget the visit or phone call,” said Feinstein.
“On the other hand, routine neglect from staff at nursing homes may leave the patient feeling sad, frustrated and lonely even though the patient can’t remember why,” Feinstein says.
The experiment started with an emotion-induction technique using powerful film clips. Each amnesic patient viewed 20 minutes of either sad or happy movies on separate days.
The movies triggered the appropriate emotion, ranging from intense bouts of laughter during happy films to tears of sorrow during sad ones.
About 10 minutes after the clip ended, researchers gave patients a memory test to see if they could recall what they had watched. As expected, the patients were extremely impaired. A healthy person can recall about 30 details from each clip.
After the memory test, patients answered questions to gauge their emotions.
“Indeed, they still felt the emotion. Sadness tended to last a bit longer than happiness, but both emotions lasted well beyond their memory of the films,” Feinstein said.
“With healthy people, you see feelings decay as time goes on. In two patients, the feelings didn’t decay; in fact, their sadness lingered.”
These findings challenge the popular notion that erasing a painful memory can abolish psychological suffering.
They also reinforce the importance of attending to the emotional needs of people with Alzheimer’s, which is expected to affect as many as 100 million people worldwide by 2050.
“Age is the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s, and there’s currently no cure,” Feinstein said. The burden of care for these individuals is enormous, said a U-I release.
These findings were published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
