Forgetting the start of a story may be an early dementia sign – study

Forgetting the start of a story may be an early sign of dementia, according to experts.

Scientists have found delayed narrative recall to be associated with higher levels of a protein in the brain known as amyloid beta, which is an indicator of Alzheimer’s disease.

The team said the findings, published in the Journal of Neuropsychology, could be an “inexpensive and accurate way of identifying dementia in people who are otherwise asymptomatic”.

Dr Davide Bruno, from the School of Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) – who is the first author on the study, said: “Presence of amyloid plaques in the brain is hypothesised to kickstart neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease.

“While we are not sure exactly why, forgetting what we learn at the beginning tells us that Alzheimer’s pathology may be settling in.

“We think it may be related to preserving information about the order of events – a fundamental feature of memory the loss of which is somewhat akin to a canary in a coalmine, so to speak.”

A team of scientists from LJMU and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US, analysed the data from the Wisconsin Registry of Alzheimer’s Prevention, which is an ongoing family history study of Alzheimer’s disease.

They investigated the memory performance of 653 people to see whether it was easier to remember the first part of the story compared to the middle of the story.

Dr Bruno said: “We knew that people forgetting the first things on a list were at heightened risk of dementia so we wanted to find out if it was the same for other types of memory.”

The researchers then looked at a sub-sample of 223 individuals to see whether having evidence of amyloid plaques in the brain was linked to how well they remembered the beginning of two stories that are part of a common neuropsychological test.

The authors found that forgetting the beginning of a story was associated with higher levels of amyloid in the brain.

Dr Bruno said: “Not all memory is the same.

“Remembering a story may be easier than remembering items on a list because a story benefits from a coherent structure.

“And so we were not sure whether the order in which information was learned would still have an effect in memory when recalling a story.

“It turns out that it does.”