14 DAY TRIAL // A new scientific study has uncovered the fact that Alzheimer's patients find it difficult to separate important information from less important one even early in the onset of the disease. This is a very important find, as it could help researchers get a more thorough insight into how the disease acts on the human brain, and what mechanisms it employs to deprive people of their memories. The experts who conducted the recent investigation also say that the find may help them devise comprehensive new ways of training Alzheimer's patients into remembering most valuable information.
Reporting in the May issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) scientific journal Neuropsychology, authors Alan D. Castel, PhD, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), together with colleagues David A. Balota, PhD, from the Washington University in St. Louis (WU), and researcher David P. McCabe, PhD, from the Colorado State University (CSU) say that they conducted their experiments on volunteers recruited from the WU Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.
Some 109 healthy, older adults, who were about 75 years old on average, participated alongside 41 test subjects with very mild symptoms of Alzheimer's, and 13 other people with mild forms of the disease. Some 35 younger adults (average age 20) also participated, and they were referred to as a control group. All of these patients were then offered a number of words to memorize, with each of them having a different point value. When the participants were asked to remember the words they were told, they were also instructed to maximize the point value.
Surprisingly, all of them recalled high-value words, but, as opposed to the control group, those suffering from both the very mild and the mild form of Alzheimer's proved that they'd lost the ability to remember items according to their values. In psychological terms, this means that they had lost the ability to maximize learning and memory, which, in the case of the average human, are two very efficient processes. Basically, the researchers share, individuals lost the ability to correctly store information.
The results revealed that people suffering from very mild forms of Alzheimer's could potentially be trained to learn how to selectively memorize important information, and how to dismiss data that was of lower importance. Experts could potentially teach patients how to encode high-value knowledge, and how to resort to it when they need to.