Center on Autobiographical Memory Research, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Memory. 2023 Apr;31(4):457-473. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2023.2169466. Epub 2023 Feb 8.
Autobiographical memory impairments are prominent in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Yet, life narratives of AD patients are scarcely examined. Here, twenty-one older adults diagnosed with probably AD and 22 age-matched healthy controls told their life story, and dated the events mentioned in these narratives. AD patients provided significantly fewer life story memories overall, but the proportion of memories with reference to specific events did not differ between groups. Patients included fewer negative events in their life story, while the emotional tone of narratives was similar across groups. Impairments were found on most structural aspects, with patients' narratives being less coherent and ending somewhere in the past, while no differences were seen for life story beginnings. Both groups showed a peak in remembered events dated to young adulthood, consistent with a reminiscence bump. However, in contrast to controls, patients displayed a steep drop in life story memories after the age of 30. For both groups, a high proportion of memories within the bump period were of life script events, consistent with the idea that the life script helps to structure the recall of personal life story memories, thus suggesting that AD patients still benefit from the retrieval support of this semantic structure.
自传体记忆损伤在阿尔茨海默病（AD）中较为突出。然而，AD 患者的生活叙事却很少被研究。在这里，21 名被诊断为可能患有 AD 的老年患者和 22 名年龄匹配的健康对照组讲述了他们的生活故事，并为这些叙事中提到的事件标注日期。AD 患者总体上提供的生活故事记忆明显较少，但两组之间提及特定事件的记忆比例没有差异。患者在他们的生活故事中较少包含负面事件，而两组的叙事情绪基调相似。在大多数结构方面都发现了损伤，患者的叙事不太连贯，只停留在过去的某个时间点，而生活故事开头则没有差异。两组都在青年时期出现了记忆事件的高峰，这与怀旧高峰一致。然而，与对照组不同的是，患者在 30 岁以后的生活故事记忆急剧下降。对于两组来说，高峰时期的记忆中有很大一部分是生活脚本事件，这与生活脚本有助于构建个人生活故事记忆的回忆的观点一致，这表明 AD 患者仍然受益于这种语义结构的检索支持。
