title: Emotional working memory in Alzheimer's disease patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Few studies have assessed whether emotional content affects processes supporting working memory in Alzheimer disease (AD) patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  We assessed 22 AD patients and 40 elderly controls (EC) with a delayed matching and non-matching to sample task (DMST/DNMST), and a spatial-delayed recognition span task (SRST; unique/varied) using emotional stimuli.
  
  
  RESULTS
  AD patients showed decreased performance on both tasks compared with EC. With regard to the valence of the stimuli, we did not observe significant performance differences between groups in the DMST/DNMST. However, both groups remembered a larger number of negative than positive or neutral pictures on unique SRST.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results suggest that AD patients show a relative preservation of working memory for emotional information, particularly for negative stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiological Sciences, Laboratory of Neurosciences and Behavior, Institute of Biology, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil.
authors.forename: Corina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Satler
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tomaz