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memory tests

Some Alzheimer patients show unique compensatory brain activity

A group of Canadian researchers has found the most direct evidence to date that people with early-stage Alzheimer Disease can engage additional areas in the brain to perform successfully on memory tests. Alzheimer’s is a progressive, degenerative disease that affects an individual’s ability to think, remember, understand and make decisions. People with early-stage Alzheimer’s begin to experience problems with their episodic and semantic memory. Semantic refers to the accumulation of general world knowledge gained over a lifetime (for example, names of countries, famous people, major historical events). Episodic refers to events that one experiences throughout his/her life (for example, having visited the dentist yesterday, or graduating from college back in 1950).

Memory tests predict dementia

If they have to remember words, elderly persons in an early stage of dementia do not benefit from the relationship in meaning between these words. This was revealed in doctoral research by the neuropsychologist Pauline Spaan from the University of Amsterdam. It is now possible to develop memory tests which can predict dementia. One of the things revealed in Spaan’s research was that elderly persons who were found to have dementia two years later, were scarcely better at remembering word pairs clearly linked in meaning (for example, pipe – cigar) than word pairs without such a link (for example nail – butter). However, elderly persons who did not have dementia two years later normally benefited from such a link in meaning when remembering word pairs.