We demonstrated that an emotionally arousing content enhances long-term declarative memory in AD. Furthermore, present finding supports the use of this instrument for clinical and research purposes.

The elevated plus-maze is an animal model used to study anxiety. In a second session, rats show a reduction in the exploratory behavior even when the two sessions are separated by intervals as large as 7 days. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the reduction in the exploratory behavior is maintained after intervals larger than 7 days. Additionally, we aimed at investigating eventual correlations between behaviors in the plus-maze and activation of limbic structures as measured by Fos protein expression after the second session. Rats were tested for 5 min in the elevated plus-maze and re-tested 3, 9 or 33 days later. Other groups were tested only once. The rat brains were processed for immunohistochemical detection of Fos protein. The results show a decrease in the open arms exploration in the second trial with intervals of 3, 9 and 33 days. The expression of Fos protein in the piriform cortex, septal nucleus and paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus in the groups tested with intervals of 9 and 33 days were statistically different from the other groups. The alterations observed in exploratory behavior in the second session in the plus-maze did not correlate with Fos expression. In conclusion, although the specific test conditions were sufficient to evoke behavioral alterations in exploration in the elevated plus-maze, they were enough to induce significant Fos protein expression in piriform cortex, septal nucleus and thalamic and hypothalamic paraventricular nuclei but not in other areas such as dorsomedial nucleus of the hypothalamus and amygdala nuclei, known to be also active participants in circuits controlling fear and anxiety.

To determine the functional status in elderly patients after a hospitalisation in an Internal Medicine unit. We prospectively studied patients aged 80 or above hospitalised in the Hospital Provincial de Ciudad Real in an Internal Medicine unit, between February and July, 2003. The functional status was determined by Barthel Index. We examined 206 patients (77.4%). They showed a previous Barthel Index of 70.9; one of 48.9 in the hospitalisation stage and one of 58.6 when discharged (p<0.001). We noticed a Barthel Index when discharged which was lower than the previous Barthel one in 73.8% patients. Hospitalisation implies a great functional impairment in the functional status elderly patients. It would be convenient, therefore, to identify the risk factors to be able to set some guidelines for a preventive model.

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Objective. To assess the ability of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients to perceive emotional information and to assign subjective emotional rating scores to audiovisual presentations. Materials and Methods. 24 subjects (14 with AD, matched to controls for age and educational levels) were studied. After neuropsychological assessment, they watched a Neutral story and then a story with Emotional content. Results. Recall scores for both stories were significantly lower in AD (Neutral and Emotional: P = .001). CG assigned different emotional scores for each version of the test, P = .001, while ratings of AD did not differ, P = .32. Linear regression analyses determined the best predictors of emotional rating and recognition memory for each group among neuropsychological tests battery. Conclusions. AD patients show changes in emotional processing on declarative memory and a preserved ability to express emotions in face of arousal content. The present findings suggest that these impairments are due to general cognitive decline.

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The possibility of the presence of inter-individual emotional differences and the memory performance of rats was examined in the elevated T-maze. Two kinds of aversively motivated behaviors, inhibitory avoidance and escape learning, were measured. Based on the number of trials to achieve a learning criterion, rats were divided into two subgroups with either low or high avoidance reactivity (LAR or HAR, respectively). Retention test avoidance latencies showed that HAR animals had better avoidance memory (Mann-Whitney rank sum test, P = 0.0035). No such differences were found for the escape component of this test. These data suggest that individual emotional differences affect inhibitory avoidance performance, which may help to explain the dispersion of the data observed in other studies using this paradigm. Key words· Elevated T-maze · High and low avoidance rats · Anxiety · Emotional reactivity A large number of studies have described strains of rats selected on the basis of their emotional reactivity and conditionability. In general, these strains are the outcome of bidirectional selection for emotionality differences determined by open-field defecation and ambulation scores, as well as the speed of acquisition and retention of a conditioned avoidance response measured in an escapeavoidance conditioning apparatus. Examples are the Maudsley rats (1), Roman rats (2), Naples rats (3), Syracuse and Australian rats (4), and some selections of Sprague-Dawley rats (5).Recently, Graeff and co-workers (6-8) described the elevated T-maze test as a new method for investigating emotionally related behaviors and processes underlying learning. The apparatus is composed of two open arms arranged at right angles to one enclosed arm, elevated above the ground. The maze permits the measurement of two kinds of aversively motivated behaviors, namely, inhibitory avoidance (time the animal takes to leave the enclosed arm) and one-way escape (time taken to leave the open arm). This experimental model allows the parallel measurement of responses related to both innate and learned fear in the same subject, and permits the simultaneous assessment of memory for these behaviors. The elevated Tmaze has been shown to be sensitive to the effects of anxiolytic and memory-modulating drugs such as diazepam, the 5-HT 1A ligand ipsapirone (6,7,9) and the 5-HT 3 receptor antagonist BRL 46470A (10). Moreover, the results of these studies suggest that the two tasks measured in the T-maze test (inhibitory avoidance -conditioned component, and oneway escape -unconditioned component) generate distinct types of fear and memory that could be related to different kinds of psychiatric disorders and thus be differently affected by distinct drugs. Although the results of these studies are promising, an examination of the data for the conditioned component indicates a wide dispersion of measured values. This dispersion is not likely to be due to animal manipulation by the experimenter. In a recent study we observed a similar dispersion in rats teste...

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