Study of age-related changes in emotional memory / 临床神经病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To identify age-related changes in emotional memory.Methods A neuropsychological battery was set to measure the education-matched 48 younger, 48 middle-aged and 48 normally aging adults who were given picture tasks.Results Compared with the younger [positive (67.02 ±9.70)%,neutral (60.83 ±9.18)%, negative(75.38 ±12.80)%] and middle-aged controls [positive (68.25 ±10.89),neutral (61.63 ±7.46)%, negative (72.19 ±11.34)%], the differences of the affective images recognition accuracy in the elderly [positive (61.10 ±10.06)%, neutral (49.77 ±8.35)%, negative (55.65 ±11.17)%] were statistically significant (F=6.70,F=30.17,F=38.72,P<0.05-0.01), older adults remembering positive image better than negative image (F=15.67,P<0.05).However, there was no significant difference in their rating of valence of the images. Conclusion Emotional memory is impaired in the healthy elderly people, and indicates that age-related changes in emotional memory indicates may have different neuromechanisms.