Differences in olfactory and visual memory in patients with pathologically confirmed Alzheimer's disease and the Lewy body variant of Alzheimer's disease

• Published in: Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society Vol. 10; no. 6; p. 835
• Main Authors: Gilbert, Paul E, Barr, P Joyce, Murphy, Claire
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01-10-2004
• Subjects: Aged; Alzheimer Disease - psychology; Female; Humans; Lewy Body Disease - psychology; Male; Memory - physiology; Prosopagnosia - psychology; Recognition (Psychology); Retrospective Studies; Sensory Thresholds - drug effects; Smell - physiology; Visual Perception - physiology
• ISSN: 1355-6177
• DOI: 10.1017/S1355617704106024

Recognition and remote memory for odors, faces, and symbols were assessed in patients with pathologically confirmed Lewy body variant of Alzheimer's disease (LBV), patients with pathologically confirmed Alzheimer's disease (AD), and healthy elderly controls. On recognition memory tasks, LBV and AD patients showed significantly lower discriminability (d') than controls, particularly for olfactory stimuli. However no significant differences were found in the bias measure (c). When participants rated familiarity (a proposed measure of remote memory) of olfactory stimuli LBV and AD patients reported significantly lower familiarity than controls. Familiarity ratings were significantly lower in LBV patients than in AD patients for olfactory, but not for visual stimuli. Consistent with prior reports, the LBV patients showed significantly poorer odor thresholds than AD patients. The results suggest that recognition memory for olfactory stimuli is impaired in LBV and AD. However, patients with LBV are more impaired than patients with AD on tasks requiring remote memory for olfactory but not visual stimuli. The findings suggest that odor memory tasks may be useful in the assessment of LBV and AD.