False Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease

Figure 1

We propose that phenomenological characteristics of memories contribute to misattributions in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). More specifically, decline in inhibition in AD results in a difficulty to suppress irrelevant information during memory monitoring, especially when the irrelevant (i.e., false) information is characterized by high emotion, vividness, or familiarity. We also propose that binding deficits in AD decrease the ability to retrieve relevant contextual details, leading to memory monitoring errors and misattributions.