Emotional memories persist, even for amnesiacs

New research has found that while people with amnesia or Alzheimer's disease may not be able to remember any of the details of an experience, the emotional flavor does persist:

[University of Iowa graduate student Justin] Feinstein says, "Your brain is no longer able to catch onto those experiences, so your day-to-day experiences, like what you had for breakfast this morning, what you did last Saturday night, those are gone. They're vanished."

But Feinstein suspected that the good feelings and bad feelings triggered by meaningful events might linger, captured by a different part of the brain.

So, to stir up some strong emotion, he threw a mini-film fest in his clinic. He showed several people who have damage to the hippocampus a string of short movie clips from tear-jerker classics.

One was the scene in Forrest Gump where he is crying all alone at the grave of his dead wife, Jenny.

It worked. Everyone who watched the film clips was visibly moved — some to tears. Yet a half-hour later, when quizzed about the movies, they didn't remember a thing — not even one woman who had sobbed during the films.

"We test her memory, her memory's gone," Feinstein says. "What happens to her emotions? Well, it turns out she's still sad."

...

Now here's the good news: When Feinstein and his colleagues repeated the experiment, this time showing the same people clips from funny or uplifting movies, like When Harry Met Sally or a Bill Cosby special, it put everybody in a great mood.

And that good feeling outlasted their memories, too. Remember that, Feinstein says, next time you spend time with a friend or family member with Alzheimer's.

I started volunteering with a hospice again last week, and this story really drove home for me that these visits can really make a difference for people.

The full story from NPR.