Centre for Policy on Ageing



Amnestic people with Alzheimer's disease who remembered the Kobe earthquake
Author(s)	M Ikeda, E Mori, N Hirono
Journal title	The British Journal of Psychiatry, vol 172, no 5, May 1998
Pages	pp 425-428
Keywords	Memory and Reminiscence ; Emotions ; Dementia ; Anxiety ; Earthquakes ; Evaluation ; Japan.
Annotation	Emotional memory is a special category of memory for events arousing strong emotions. To investigate the effects of emotional involvement on memory retention in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD), the authors studied 51 subjects with probable AD who experienced the 1995 Kobe, Japan earthquake at home. Memories of the earthquake were assessed 6 and 10 weeks after the disaster in semi-structured interviews, and were compared with memories of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination given after the earthquake. 44 (86.3%) of the subjects remembered the earthquake, and 16 (31.4%) of the subjects remembered the MRI experience. It is concluded that fear reinforces memory retention of an episode in subjects with AD, but does not enhance retention of its context, despite repeated exposure to the information. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-980521009 A
Classmark	DB: DL: EA: ENP: RG5: 4C: 7DT
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.