Abstract
Objective Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by a slow progressive impairment of episodic memory. Many studies have shown that AD exhibits deterioration of semantic memory during the course of disease progression. We previously reported that AD patients exhibited severe access disorders in the semantic memory system, using the Momentary Presentation Task (20 or 300 ms). In this study, we studied access disorder in patients with AD by the use of object difference (pictures vs words) methods. Methods 56 patients with probable AD (NINCDS-ADRDA, mean age 79.0 years) and 11 healthy controls (HC) (mean age 67.0 years) were studied. Ten pictures and 10 corresponding Japanese Hiragana words were presented arbitrarily for 20 and 300 ms on the monitor screen which were correctly named at the usual confrontation setting (i.e., semantic memory preserved). They were asked to name the pictures or to read the words or nonsense syllables aloud. Results The AD group showed significantly lower scores than the HC group, especially for the 20 ms condition. For the type of stimuli, the AD patients had better performances for words > pictures > nonsense syllables, although no differences for the HC group. The effect of AD severity was noted, moderate > severe stage. Conclusions Our results suggested that the processing speed in AD patients may have reduced, even if the semantic memory were preserved. These data indicated that the difference in the processing speeds by the type of stimuli (pictures, words, and nonsense syllables) may be a character of AD patients.
Highlights
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by a slow progressive impairment of episodic memory
Our results revealed that the processing speed of both words and pictures of the AD group was slower than those of the healthy controls (HC) group
In the AD group, the deficits of the processing speed depended on the types of stimuli
Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by a slow progressive impairment of episodic memory. Ten pictures and 10 corresponding Japanese Hiragana words were presented arbitrarily for 20 and 300 ms on the monitor screen which were correctly named at the usual confrontation setting (i.e., semantic memory preserved). They were asked to name the pictures or to read the words or nonsense syllables aloud. Our results suggested that the processing speed in AD patients may have reduced, even if the semantic memory were preserved These data indicated that the difference in the processing speeds by the type of stimuli (pictures, words, and nonsense syllables) may be a character of AD patients
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