Sensory Cueing of Autobiographical Memories in Normal Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Comparison Between Visual, Auditory, and Olfactory Information

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic, neurodegenerative disease resulting in a progressive decline of autobiographical memories (AMs) which favors the development of psycho-behavioral disorders. One of the most popular psychosocial interventions in dementia care, Reminiscence Therapy, commonly uses sensory cueing to stimulate AMs retrieval. However, few empirical studies have investigated the impact of sensory stimulation on AMs retrieval in AD. OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to determine the most relevant cue for AMs retrieval in patients with early to mild AD when comparing odors, sounds and pictures. METHODS: Sixty AD patients, 60 healthy older adults (OA), and 60 healthy young adults (YA) participated in our study. Participants were presented with either 4 odors, 4 sounds, or 4 pictures. For each stimulus, they were asked to retrieve a personal memory, to rate it across 3 dimensions (emotionality, vividness, rarity) and then to date it. RESULTS: Overall, results showed no clear dominance of one sensory modality over the others in evoking higher-quality AMs. However, they show that using pictures is the better way to stimulate AD patients’ AM, as it helps to retrieve a higher number of memories that are also less frequently retrieved, followed by odors. By contrast, auditory cueing with environmental sounds presented no true advantage. CONCLUSION: Our data should help dementia care professionals to increase the efficiency of Reminiscence Therapy using sensory elicitors. Other clinical implications and future directions are also discussed.