ADAE : Alzheimer's Disease, Action and Enaction

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is increasingly conceptualised as a disconnection syndrome in which memory failures reflect not only weakened traces, but also blurred and insufficiently differentiated representations that are highly vulnerable to interference. At the same time, embodied and grounded theories of cognition propose that memory traces are distributed across sensorimotor systems and that encoding is strengthened when the body is engaged in ways that are congruent with the to-be-learned material. Building on these two perspectives, the present study tests whether action-based encoding can enhance episodic memory and partially compensate for the detrimental effects of auditory interference in early AD. We recruit individuals with mild Alzheimer’s disease (MMSE above 21) and age-matched healthy older adults. In a within-subject design, participants learn short action-related sentences under four conditions: (1) reading-only control, (2) enactment of the described action (action), (3) background music during encoding (music), and (4) simultaneous enactment and background music (dual). Memory for the sentences is assessed by subsequent free recall and recognition. We hypothesise that, relative to the control condition, action-based encoding will improve memory performance, whereas background music alone will impair it. In the dual condition, we predict a compensatory pattern, with performance lower than in the pure action condition but higher than in the music-only condition. This pattern is expected in both recall and recognition, and may be particularly informative in characterising how embodied, multimodal encoding can protect fragile memory traces against interference in early AD.