Abstract
Autobiographical memory, which contains all personal memories relative to our identity, has been found to be impaired in Alzheimer’ Disease (AD). Recent research has demonstrated that odor may serve as a powerful cue for the recovery of autobiographical memories in AD. Building on this research, we investigated emotional characteristics (arousal and valence) and subjective reliving of odor-evoked autobiographical memories in AD. We also investigated the relationship between these characteristics and depression. To this end, we invited participants with mild AD and controls to retrieve autobiographical memories after odor exposure or without odor. Results showed higher arousal, subjective reliving and more positive memories after odor exposure compared with the odor-free condition, these differences being observed only in AD participants. We also found that emotion (arousal and valence) and subjective reliving triggered by odor were associated with depressive symptoms in AD. These findings demonstrate that odor may be a useful cue to trigger more detailed, vivid and positive events in AD.
Highlights
Autobiographical memory is an essential part of the human memory system as it allows the construction and maintenance of self-awareness, personal knowledge and self-image [1], and can be defined as the ability to relive past personal events
We evaluated the relationship between depression and phenomenological characteristics of odor-evoked autobiographical memories in Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
We investigated the relationship between depression and the characteristics of autobiographical retrieval in AD
Summary
Autobiographical memory is an essential part of the human memory system as it allows the construction and maintenance of self-awareness, personal knowledge and self-image [1], and can be defined as the ability to relive past personal events. As a result of autobiographical memory impairment, AD patients demonstrate difficulty in mentally reliving past events with the perceptual, sensory and conceptual details of the original event, replaced by a general feeling of knowing or familiarity [2,16,17,18,19,20]. Studies have tried to alleviate impairment of autobiographical memory in AD by focusing on sensory cues. Some studies have shown that powerful perceptive cues such as music and odor have a beneficial impact on the involuntary retrieval of autobiographical memories in AD, principally by diminishing the time taken to retrieve these memories [2,8,21]. Involuntary autobiographical memories were described by [22] as conscious memories of personal events that come to mind spontaneously
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