False Memories in Alzheimer's Disease

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Many Veterans with Alzheimer’s disease in the mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia stages live alone in the community. Although it has been known for over 100 years that forgetting interferes with their quality of life, we have obtained new data demonstrating that rates of false memories in those with AD are extremely high—almost as high as forgetting. The goal of this grant is to understand the physiological and cognitive basis of false memories and their clinical and functional implications in daily life. We need to understand to what degree false memories impact the daily life of patients with AD. We need to determine good models of false memories in the laboratory that correlate with false memories in the real world. We need to use those models to understand the cognitive and physiological bases of false memories, and to try out different strategies, aids, and techniques to reduce false memories. To accomplish these goals we plan to do the following studies. Experiment 1 will examine the correlation between false memories and forgetting (using standard and novel questionnaires) with activities of daily living and quality of life (using standard questionnaires) in patients with AD. Experiment 2 will examine the correlation between false memories in daily life (using a novel questionnaire) and several experimental false memory paradigms in patients with AD. Experiment 3 will use standard neuropsychological tests to examine the cognitive domains that underlie false memories in patients with AD. Experiment 4 will use novel behavioral experimental memory paradigms to examine the memory components that underlie false memories in patients with AD. Experiment 5 will use a novel event-related potential (ERP) false memory paradigm to examine the physiological basis of false memories in patients with AD. Once these goals have been accomplished, we will be ready to apply these methods to reduce false memories in the daily life of Veterans with AD. Our prior VA Merit research worked to better understand true and false memories of patients with AD in the laboratory. The present proposal builds on the prior work and takes a major step forward, aiming to understand how false memories in daily life relate to false memories in the laboratory, as well as to cognitive function, brain physiology, and—most importantly—quality of life. Once these relationships are understood, laboratory models of false memories can be utilized to rationally design interventions that can reduce false memories in the daily life patients with AD, improving quality of life for patients and their families.