What is affective memory in Alzheimer’s?

Affective memory is the emotional response that returns with a significant experience, such as seeing a loved one or receiving a hug, remaining even when factual memories fade due to Alzheimer’s.

Can people with Alzheimer’s feel emotions?

Yes. People with Alzheimer’s can still feel emotions even if they forget the causes; feelings may be fleeting but affection and emotional responses persist.

How does affective memory help caregivers of Alzheimer patients?

Affective memory offers caregivers anchors of calm and connection; simple gestures like hugs can create comfort, reduce agitation, and reinforce positive emotional exchange.

Why are gestures important in Alzheimer’s care?

Gestures convey emotions when words fail, allowing relatives and caregivers to exchange positive feelings, foster security, and maintain interpersonal connection despite memory loss.

Does Alzheimer’s erase love and affection?

No. While Alzheimer’s erases many memories and aspects of identity, love and affective responses often remain and can preserve emotional bonds.

How can families use affective memory every day?

Maintain presence, offer gentle touch, establish soothing routines, use familiar gestures and tones, and prioritize moments of warmth to sustain emotional connection.

The Remains of a Shipwreck: Emotional Memory and Alzheimer’s

The remains of a shipwreck. That is how I like to call what Alzheimer does not take. And in a way that is how what survives the disease after such a tremendous tsunami of devastation is represented. After losing memories, identity and, why not say it, even the essence as a person, in a person affected by Alzheimer there is still room for affective memory. A privileged place at that. Affective memory is the one we hear so much about and that can be summed up in one word: LOVE. Because it is true that the disease erases memories and also the life of the patient, but it does not erase affections.

When the diagnosis arrives, after the initial grief, the relatives of a person with Alzheimer often fear, once again after learning that they suffer from this condition, how to treat them or how to relate to them emotionally. Within that wrapping that deteriorates every day, there is a person who has the same affections as before, only that these are accompanied by the symptoms already well known to everyone.

Affective memory in psychology

In psychology affective memory is understood as “the feeling with a special emotional charge that reappears each time a previous significant experience is remembered.” Here we could also add “each time the patient sees someone they love, or each time someone gives them a hug”

I must say that I do not know of any case of Alzheimer where affective memory is not present in one way or another. All patients, regardless of the stage of the disease they are in and how their transition through it is unfolding, respond positively to affective stimuli. That, for the caregiver, is a source of security and an anchor to the present, since nothing is lost if a hug can still bring the patient a smile or a moment of calm and safety amid episodes of nervousness, delusions, or hallucinations.

People with Alzheimer’s can feel emotions

Those reading this may wonder how it is possible that a person who does not remember who they are understands the meaning of a kiss, a hug, or a caress. The explanation is very simple: people with Alzheimer’s can feel emotions even though, because of the disease, they forget the reason that causes them; but the feeling, although fleeting, exists, and that is the essence of affection.

A person with Alzheimer’s may not be able to remember that someone is their son, whom they see daily and who cares for them, but that person’s mere presence can instill calm, since from the confused mental fabric that guides their consciousness, their son’s face is a “friendly” face, a source of caresses and perhaps also kisses and hugs, a plank to hold on to in the middle of the shipwreck.

Talking with gestures

It is positive for patients to experience love, security and tranquility thanks to affective memory, but it is also beneficial for caregivers; for this reason, and increasingly so, it is considered essential that the relatives of a person with Alzheimer’s and their main caregivers learn to express with gestures what they once could convey with words, with the aim of exchanging (and not only giving) positive emotions with the patient.

This exchange of positive affective emotions continues until the end, because even if the patient began long ago on a path of no return in which they will leave their memories along with all their life baggage, we must be clear that only the love we feel for him will keep him connected to us and to the person he once was.