False recall in older adults and Alzheimer's linked to attention, not memory,...( akes itincreasingly difficult for the ...),Health

The increase in false memory susceptibility among healthy older adults and individuals with Alzheimer's seems to indicate that the mind is somehow overwhelmed by the flood of jumbled recollections still pouring in from an active network of knowledge-based associations. False memories result not from a lack of information, but from the mind's diminished ability to process the information and reach sound conclusions.

"Recent studies in our laboratory indicate that attentional control breakdowns can indeed provide a coherent famework to interpret both the attention breakdowns and the memory breakdowns that occur in Alzheimer's disease," Balota said. "It is quite possible that the apparent memory loss in Alzheimer's disease is in fact a breakdown in attention, as opposed to a breakdown in memory, as one finds in classic cases of amnesia.

"If indeed at least some of the breakdowns may be due to strategic failures," Balota continued, "then it is possible that more appropriate strategies may be trained in these individuals and this may help reduce some of the cognitive declines that occur in both healthy older adults and in early stage Alzheimer's disease. For example, if there is a better understanding of the manner in which such false memories are produced, maybe these individuals could be trained to avoid such distortions of memory. The critical first step is to determine which systems breakdown and which systems are relatively preserved in these populations."

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Contact: Gerry Everding
gerry_everding@aismail.wustl.edu
314-935-6375
Washington University in St. Louis
4-Jun-1999