Alzheimer patients' use of auditory and olfactory cues to aid verbal memory

Abstract

As part of a programme of studies investigating memory for everyday tasks, we examined the potential of auditory and olfactory sensory cues to improve free recall of an action event (cooking an omelette) by individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type. Both healthy elderly and volunteers with DAT recalled more of the individual actions which comprised the event when they listened, prior to recall, to a tape of sounds associated with the event. Olfactory cues which accompanied auditory cues did not produce additional benefits over auditory cues alone. The pattern of recall suggests that the auditory cues improved recall of the whole event, and were not merely increasing recall of the specific actions associated with the sound cues. The results strongly suggest that individuals with DAT continue to encode experiences multimodally, and that they can subsequently use sensory information to aid memory. This has practical implications for accessing residual memory for a wide range of everyday activities.