Research Demonstrates Lasting Importance of Stimulus to Emotions of Those With Dementia
NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday highlighted a new study that suggests people with Alzheimer’s may hold on to happy or sad emotions beyond the event that triggers those feelings. Here’s the link to the audio.
The University of Iowa researchers published their article in the September 2014 issue of the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, and it follows preliminary studies they published in 2010. The study used 20 minute movie clips with “happy” or “sad” themes with test groups. As summarized by Iowa Now:
About five minutes after watching the movies, the researchers gave participants a memory test to see if they could recall what they had just seen. As expected, the patients with Alzheimer’s disease retained significantly less information about both the sad and happy films than the healthy people. In fact, four patients were unable to recall any factual information about the films, and one patient didn’t even remember watching any movies.
Before and after seeing the films, participants answered questions to gauge their feelings. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease reported elevated levels of either sadness or happiness for up to 30 minutes after viewing the films despite having little or no recollection of the movies.
Quite strikingly, the less the patients remembered about the films, the longer their sadness lasted. While sadness tended to last a little longer than happiness, both emotions far outlasted the memory of the films.
The studies suggest the importance of positive stimuli from caregivers. The researchers emphasized that their findings “should empower caregivers by showing them that their actions toward patients really do matter.” Researcher Edmarie Guzman-Velez said “Frequent visits and social interactions, exercise, music, dance, jokes, and serving patients their favorite foods are all simple things that can have a lasting emotional impact on a patient’s quality of life and subjective well-being.”