Relationship between memory, attention, and depression in chronic cerebro-vascular patients.

Vascular dementia patients show a component of their impairment as emotional. In the two studies that we present it was possible to illustrate the characteristics of such emotional component. a. The discrepancy between immediate recall and delayed recall appears to be very sensitive to anxiety interference when immediate recall is lower than delayed. b. The presence of emotional problems contributing to memory complaints in VaD patients is not equally distributed along the severity of deterioration dimension but can be identified as a specific component different from the cognitive one especially in that subgroup of patients who present an intermediate level of deterioration.