Alzheimer's patients can still feel the emotion long after the memories have vanished

University of Iowa study offers good news for care givers, health care providers

2014-09-24

(Press-News.org) A new University of Iowa study further supports an inescapable message: caregivers have a profound influence—good or bad—on the emotional state of individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Patients may not remember a recent visit by a loved one or having been neglected by staff at a nursing home, but those actions can have a lasting impact on how they feel. The findings of this study are published in the September 2014 issue of the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, and can be viewed online for free here. UI researchers showed individuals with Alzheimer's disease clips of sad and happy movies. The patients experienced sustained states of sadness and happiness despite not being able to remember the movies. "This confirms that the emotional life of an Alzheimer's patient is alive and well," says lead author Edmarie Guzmán-Vélez, a doctoral student in clinical psychology, a Dean's Graduate Research Fellow, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Guzmán-Vélez conducted the study with Daniel Tranel, UI professor of neurology and psychology, and Justin Feinstein, assistant professor at the University of Tulsa and the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. Tranel and Feinstein published a paper in 2010 that predicted the importance of attending to the emotional needs of people with Alzheimer's, which is expected to affect as many as 16 million people in the United States by 2050 and cost an estimated $1.2 trillion. "It's extremely important to see data that support our previous prediction," Tranel says. "Edmarie's research has immediate implications for how we treat patients and how we teach caregivers." Despite the considerable amount of research aimed at finding new treatments for Alzheimer's, no drug has succeeded at either preventing or substantially influencing the disease's progression. Against this foreboding backdrop, the results of this study highlight the need to develop new caregiving techniques aimed at improving the well-being and minimizing the suffering for the millions of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer's. For this behavioral study, Guzmán-Vélez and her colleagues invited 17 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 17 healthy comparison participants to view 20 minutes of sad and then happy movies. These movie clips triggered the expected emotion: sorrow and tears during the sad films and laughter during the happy ones. About five minutes after watching the movies, the researchers gave participants a memory test to see if they could recall what they had just seen. As expected, the patients with Alzheimer's disease retained significantly less information about both the sad and happy films than the healthy people. In fact, four patients were unable to recall any factual information about the films, and one patient didn't even remember watching any movies.

Before and after seeing the films, participants answered questions to gauge their feelings. Patients with Alzheimer's disease reported elevated levels of either sadness or happiness for up to 30 minutes after viewing the films despite having little or no recollection of the movies. Quite strikingly, the less the patients remembered about the films, the longer their sadness lasted. While sadness tended to last a little longer than happiness, both emotions far outlasted the memory of the films. The fact that forgotten events can continue to exert a profound influence on a patient's emotional life highlights the need for caregivers to avoid causing negative feelings and to try to induce positive feelings. "Our findings should empower caregivers by showing them that their actions toward patients really do matter," Guzmán-Vélez says. "Frequent visits and social interactions, exercise, music, dance, jokes, and serving patients their favorite foods are all simple things that can have a lasting emotional impact on a patient's quality of life and subjective well-being." INFORMATION: The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (grant number: P01 NS19632), a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to Guzmán-Vélez, Kiwanis International, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, an American Psychological Association of Graduate Students Basic Psychological Research Grant, and the William K. Warren Foundation.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Clear skies on exo-Neptune

2014-09-24

Astronomers using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Kepler Space Telescope have discovered clear skies and steamy water vapour on a planet outside our Solar System. The planet, known as HAT-P-11b, is about the size of Neptune, making it the smallest exoplanet ever on which water vapour has been detected. The results will appear in the online version of the journal Nature on 24 September 2014. The discovery is a milestone on the road to eventually finding molecules in the atmospheres of smaller, rocky planets more akin ...

Most metal-poor star hints at universe's first supernovae

2014-09-24

A team of researchers, led by Miho N. Ishigaki, at the Kavli IPMU, The University of Tokyo, pointed out that the elemental abundance of the most iron-poor star can be explained by elements ejected from supernova explosions of the universe's first stars. Their theoretical study revealed that massive stars, which are several tens of times more immense than the Sun, were present among the first stars. The presence of these massive stars has great implications on the theory of star formation in the absence of heavy elements. Iron-poor stars provide insight about the very ...

A look at Florida's charterboat-based recreational shark fishery

2014-09-24

CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA (September 24, 2014) — The challenge and excitement of catching a large fish makes shark fishing very appealing for recreational anglers. However, many species of sharks have experienced population declines due to commercial overfishing. Although generally overlooked by conservation advocates, catch and release shark fishing can provide a strong economic incentive to protect sharks, benefiting both ecotourism businesses and shark conservation. Florida is one of the largest recreational shark fishing markets in the world. However, Florida's recreational ...

Realizing the promise of education

2014-09-24

Miami, Fla. (September, 24, 2014)—Two decades after its initiation, the University of Miami (UM) Linda Ray Intervention Program for substance-exposed babies and toddlers demonstrates long-term success. The program is designed to help children from birth to three years of age who are developmentally delayed, prenatally exposed to drugs and often with the additional risk of maltreatment, ultimately achieve their developmental milestones and be ready to enter kindergarten ready to learn. The program started in 1993 as an innovative partnership between the UM Linda Ray Intervention ...

Modest acute changes in cardiac biomarkers and electrocardiogram findings following thoracic radiation therapy

2014-09-24

DENVER – There were only modest acute changes in cardiac biomarkers and electrocardiograms and there were no clinically significant cardiac events in patients with high-dose radiation exposure to the heart following thoracic radiation therapy (RT) and short-term follow-up. Radiation therapy is standard of care for some patients with thoracic malignancies such as lung cancer, esophageal cancer, thymoma, or malignant mesothelioma. Radiation exposure to the heart is avoided when possible but even with advanced radiation therapy techniques there are instances when high radiation ...

Indian scientists significantly more religious than UK scientists

2014-09-24

Indian scientists are significantly more religious than United Kingdom scientists, according to the first cross-national study of religion and spirituality among scientists. The U.K. and India results from Religion Among Scientists in International Context (RASIC) study were presented at the Policies and Perspectives: Implications From the Religion Among Scientists in International Context Study conference held today in London. The conference was sponsored by the Religion and Public Life Program and the Baker Institute for Public Policy. The U.K. results were also presented ...

Drivers, don't trade in your smartphone for Google Glass yet

2014-09-24

Texting while driving with Google Glass is clearly a distraction, a new University of Central Florida study has concluded -- but there is a twist. In the study, texting Glass users outperformed smartphone users when regaining control of their vehicles after a traffic incident. "Texting with either a smartphone or Glass will cause distraction and should be avoided while driving" said UCF researcher Ben Sawyer. "Glass did help drivers in our study recover more quickly than those texting on a smartphone. We hope that Glass points the way to technology that can help deliver ...

Less costly to screen for and treat early-stage lung than to treat late-stage lung cancer

2014-09-24

DENVER – The average cost to screen high-risk individuals for developing lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) plus the average cost of curative intent treatment, like surgery, is lower than the average cost to treat advanced stage lung cancer, which quite rarely results in a cure. The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) has previously shown that LDCT screening of people at high-risk for lung cancer reduces lung cancer mortality by 20%, thus many organizations including the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) have recommend LDCT ...

Customer experience matters more when economy is strong, research shows

2014-09-24

ATLANTA—Customers care more about their past experiences with service firms when the economy is doing well, according to a research team from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. The researchers found it is more important for service firms to focus their resources and efforts on improving customer experience when economic times are good, as opposed to when the economy is down. This new finding contradicts previous beliefs that firms should increase their efforts to improve customer experience during difficult economic times to hold on ...

NRL researchers develop novel method to synthesize nanoparticles

2014-09-24

WASHINGTON – Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Materials Science and Technology Division have developed a novel one-step process using, for the first time in these types of syntheses, potassium superoxide (KO2) to rapidly form oxide nanoparticles from simple salt solutions in water. "Typically, the synthesis of oxide nanoparticles involves the slow reaction of a weak oxidizing agent, such as hydrogen peroxide, with dilute solutions of metal salts or complexes in both aqueous and non-aqueous solvent systems," said Dr. Thomas Sutto, NRL research chemist. ...

Inhibition of cyclooxygenase-2 upregulates the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 signaling pathway to mitigate hepatocyte ferroptosis in chronic liver injury

Alzheimer's patients can still feel the emotion long after the memories have vanished

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: