Phenomenological Reliving and Visual Imagery During Autobiographical Recall in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Multiple studies have shown compromise of autobiographical memory and phenomenological reliving in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We investigated various phenomenological features of autobiographical memory to determine their relative vulnerability in AD. To this aim, participants with early AD and cognitively normal older adult controls were asked to retrieve an autobiographical event and rate on a 5-point scale metacognitive judgments (i.e., reliving, back in time, remembering, and realness), component processes (i.e., visual imagery, auditory imagery, language, and emotion), narrative properties (i.e., rehearsal and importance), and spatiotemporal specificity (i.e., spatial details and temporal details). AD participants showed lower general autobiographical recall than controls, and poorer reliving, travel in time, remembering, realness, visual imagery, auditory imagery, language, rehearsal, and spatial detail – a decrease that was especially pronounced for visual imagery. Yet, AD participants showed high rating for emotion and importance. Early AD seems to compromise many phenomenological features, especially visual imagery, but also seems to preserve some other features.

Clinical and neurocognitive aspects of hallucinations in Alzheimer’s disease

“…Future research should incorporate these assessments because research on hallucinations in other clinical groups (e.g., schizophrenia) provide considerably more detail about the phenomenology of hallucinatory experience than research in AD. To overcome the effect of potential lack of insight of AD patients into the nature of hallucinatory experience [78], especially those in advanced stages of the disease, research can compare auto-evaluation scales with hetero-evaluation ones. It is worth noting, however, that one priority is to validate these scales in AD, as, to the very best of our knowledge, no published study has validated any hallucinations scales in AD.…”

Flashbulb memories of Paris attacks

“…The subjects had great difficulty in mentally reliving the events (i.e., they provided few “remember” responses), findings that were confirmed by subsequent studies. [31,34–36] However, Madame F reported high visual imagery, auditory imagery, and mental time travel for flashbulb memories. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the subjective experience of flashbulb memories in AD.…”

There is more to memory than recollection and familiarity

“…In our view, impaired recollection abilities is first related to the deterioration of item-context bindings in the relational representation core system (Braak's Stage 3) and impaired pattern completion in the hippocampus (Ally et al 2013;Xue 2018). As the disease progresses, pathology extends to posterior regions such as the retrosplenial and posterior cingulate cortices, affecting the reinstatement of complex representations and autonoetic consciousness of remembered episodes (Genon et al 2013), and decreasing the ability to have the subjective feeling of mentally reliving the past (El Haj et al 2016).…”