Univ. Lille, CNRS, CHU Lille, UMR 9193-SCALab-Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, Lille, France.
Univ Nantes, Laboratoire de psychologie des Pays de la Loire, LPPL, Nantes, France.
Chem Senses. 2020 May 21;45(4):313-320. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjaa016.
Several studies have demonstrated that Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated not only with difficulty in remembering past events but also with a compromised ability to imagine future ones. Recent empirical research has also demonstrated that odor is an effective cue to alleviate difficulty in remembering past events in AD. We investigated whether odor exposure would help AD patients to imagine future events. To this end, we invited AD patients and control participants to evoke past and future events after odor exposure or without odor. Analysis showed that AD patients and control participants produced more specific and more emotional past and future events after odor exposure than without odor. However, odor exposure did not improve the retrieval time for future thinking in AD participants. This study is the first to demonstrate positive effects of odor exposure on the ability of AD patients to project themselves into the future.
多项研究表明，阿尔茨海默病（AD）不仅与回忆过去事件的困难有关，还与想象未来事件的能力受损有关。最近的实证研究还表明，气味是缓解 AD 患者回忆过去事件困难的有效线索。我们调查了气味暴露是否有助于 AD 患者想象未来事件。为此，我们邀请 AD 患者和对照组参与者在暴露于气味或不暴露于气味后唤起过去和未来的事件。分析表明，AD 患者和对照组参与者在暴露于气味后比不暴露于气味时产生了更多具体和更情绪化的过去和未来事件。然而，气味暴露并没有改善 AD 参与者对未来思维的检索时间。这项研究首次证明了气味暴露对 AD 患者想象未来能力的积极影响。
