TY - JOUR
T1 - Memory performances in young, elderly, and very old healthy individuals versus patients with Alzheimer's disease
T2 - Evidence for discontinuity between normal and pathological aging
AU - Carlesimo, Giovanni A.
AU - Mauri, Marco
AU - Graceffa, A. M S
AU - Fadda, Lucia
AU - Loasses, Antonella
AU - Lorusso, Sebastiano
AU - Caltagirone, Carlo
PY - 1998
Y1 - 1998
N2 - In this study we compared memory performances of 29 probable patients with AD (17 mildly and 12 moderately demented) with those of 39 healthy young subjects, 36 elderly subjects (matched with the AD group for age and years of schooling), and 19 healthy very old subjects. In most of the memory tasks used in the present study, a progressive decline in performance was observed passing from the Young to the Elderly to the Very Old to the AD group. However, patients with AD were selectively impaired in the backward reproduction of verbal and spatial span sequences and in the semantic encoding of verbal material. These data are consistent with the hypothesis of not only quantitative but also a qualitative discontinuity between the process of normal aging and the dementia syndrome.
AB - In this study we compared memory performances of 29 probable patients with AD (17 mildly and 12 moderately demented) with those of 39 healthy young subjects, 36 elderly subjects (matched with the AD group for age and years of schooling), and 19 healthy very old subjects. In most of the memory tasks used in the present study, a progressive decline in performance was observed passing from the Young to the Elderly to the Very Old to the AD group. However, patients with AD were selectively impaired in the backward reproduction of verbal and spatial span sequences and in the semantic encoding of verbal material. These data are consistent with the hypothesis of not only quantitative but also a qualitative discontinuity between the process of normal aging and the dementia syndrome.
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U2 - 10.1076/jcen.20.1.14.1482
DO - 10.1076/jcen.20.1.14.1482
M3 - Article
C2 - 9672816
AN - SCOPUS:0031846561
VL - 20
SP - 14
EP - 29
JO - Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
JF - Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
SN - 1380-3395
IS - 1
ER -