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BMC Psychiatry
Published in: BMC Psychiatry 1/2013

Open Access 01-12-2013 | Research article

Medial temporal lobe function during emotional memory in early Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and healthy ageing: an fMRI study

Authors: Mario A Parra, Vivek Pattan, Dichelle Wong, Anna Beaglehole, Jane Lonie, Hong I Wan, Garry Honey, Jeremy Hall, Heather C Whalley, Stephen M Lawrie

Published in: BMC Psychiatry | Issue 1/2013

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Abstract

Background

Relative to intentional memory encoding, which quickly declines in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), incidental memory for emotional stimuli appears to deteriorate more slowly. We hypothesised that tests of incidental emotional memory may inform on different aspects of cognitive decline in MCI and AD.

Methods

Patients with MCI, AD and Healthy Controls (HC) were asked to attend to emotional pictures (i.e., positive and neutral) sequentially presented during an fMRI session. Attention was monitored behaviourally. A surprise post-scan recognition test was then administered.

Results

The groups remained attentive within the scanner. The post-scan recognition pattern was in the form of (HC = MCI) > AD, with only the former group showing a clear benefit from emotional pictures. fMRI analysis of incidental encoding demonstrated clusters of activation in para-hippocampal regions and in the hippocampus in HC and MCI patients but not in AD patients. The pattern of activation observed in MCI patients tended to be greater than that found in HC.

Conclusions

The results suggest that incidental emotional memory might offer a suitable platform to investigate, using behavioural and fMRI measures, subtle changes in the process of developing AD. These changes seem to differ from those found using standard episodic memory tests. The underpinnings of such differences and the potential clinical use of this methodology are discussed in depth.
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Metadata
Title
Medial temporal lobe function during emotional memory in early Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and healthy ageing: an fMRI study
Authors
Mario A Parra
Vivek Pattan
Dichelle Wong
Anna Beaglehole
Jane Lonie
Hong I Wan
Garry Honey
Jeremy Hall
Heather C Whalley
Stephen M Lawrie
Publication date
01-12-2013
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Psychiatry / Issue 1/2013
Electronic ISSN: 1471-244X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-13-76

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