Memory Process in Demented and Non-Demented Elderly Patients

Background: Dementia is characterized by progressive memory loss and other cognitive impairments. Memory impairments are apparent on tasks that require learning and retention of verbal or non-verbal information. Demented patients present severe impairments on recognition and recalling tasks. They have severe deficits in transferring information in to a long-term storage system. The present study investigated any difference between various memory processes in different reproduction phases contribute to discrimination between demented and non-demented elderly patients. Methods: Thirty one demented and 25 non-demented elderly patients were selected according to inclusion criteria; all of them were visited by a physician completing the Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE) and California Verbal Learning Test-Persian version (CVLT-P). Results: Although demented and non-demented elderly subjects had no difference in relation to age and education, differences on clinical variables were significant and demented patients showed lower means than nondemented ones. A discriminate function analysis showed that CVLT-P had the ability to differentiate between demented and non-demented elderly patients and could correctly classify 94.3% of demented and non-demented older adults. Conclusion: Findings suggest that CVLT-P could discriminate satisfaction between these two groups and according to subscales, learning slope had the highest discrimination coefficient. So demented patients had more deficits in hippocampus causing failure of learning.