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The recombined memory: associative inference in Alzheimer’s disease

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Abstract

Background

Associative inference refers to an adaptive ability that allows flexible recombination of information acquired during previous experiences to make new connections that they have not directly experienced. This cognitive ability has been widely associated with the hippocampus.

Aims

We investigated associative inference in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and control participants.

Methods

The task has two phases. In the training phase, participants learned to encode overlapping pairs of objects (AB + BC). In the test phase, participants were invited to retrieve previously see associations (i.e., AB, BC) as well as novel associations between the previously exposed objects (i.e., AC). In addition, we test the relationship between associative inference and cognitive flexibility.

Results

Analysis demonstrated lower associative inference in AD patients than in control participants. Interestingly, performance on the associative inference task was significantly correlated with low performance on a cognitive flexibility task in AD patients.

Discussion

Our findings demonstrate a compromise of the ability to flexibly combine new representations from prior memories in AD, which is likely related to the hippocampal dysfunction in AD.

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Data availability

Data is available upon request by email to the first author.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Psychologie Des Pays de La Loire (LPPL-EA 4638), Nantes Université, Univ Angers, 44000, Nantes, France

    Mohamad El Haj & Frédérique Robin

  2. Clinical Gerontology Department, CHU Nantes, Bd Jacques Monod, 44093, Nantes, France

    Mohamad El Haj & Guillaume Chapelet

  3. Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

    Mohamad El Haj

  4. School of Psychology, Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

    Ahmed A. Moustafa

  5. Department of Human Anatomy and Physiology, the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Ahmed A. Moustafa

  6. CHU Nantes, Inserm CIC04, Nantes, France

    Guillaume Chapelet

Authors
  1. Mohamad El Haj
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  2. Ahmed A. Moustafa
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  3. Frédérique Robin
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  4. Guillaume Chapelet
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Contributions

Study conception and design: MEH. Data collection: MEH and GC. Data analysis and interpretation: MEH, AAM, FR and GC. Manuscript writing: MEH and AAM. All authors critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version to be published.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohamad El Haj.

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Conflict of interest

The authors report no conflicts with any product mentioned or concept discussed in this article. The study was supported by LABEX DISTALZ.

Ethics approval

The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki with a favorable opinion (number 20202-A02276-33) from the Committee for the Protection of Persons (the French national ethical board).

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Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

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El Haj, M., Moustafa, A.A., Robin, F. et al. The recombined memory: associative inference in Alzheimer’s disease. Aging Clin Exp Res 35, 1005–1013 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-023-02372-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-023-02372-4

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