Effects of Subcortical Vascular Ischemic Dementia and Aging on Negative and Neutral Word List Learning

Abstract

Background: Subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD) represents an important subgroup of vascular dementia. Besides characteristic cognitive deficits, particular emotional problems support the diagnosis. Emotional disturbances in SIVD are not well understood. Method: We studied the performance of SIVD patients, healthy young control persons and old control persons in an emotional word list learning task. Results: SIVD patients showed lower memory performance than both control groups for neutral as well as for negative words. However, we found a significant emotional memory advantage for negative words in all 3 diagnostic groups. Conclusion: SIVD patients are able to profit from emotional information in order to enhance their memory performance.

Filling in memory gaps through emotional communication; promising pathways in caring for persons with dementia

“…garbage, fire, poison, gun) words. In 2011, Billino et al reported results of their study about the performance on an emotional word list learning task of fourteen patients with subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD), a diagnosis supported by emotional incontinence and lability [17]. Patients' performance was compared with that of healthy young control persons (n=14) and old control persons (n=14).…”