Relationships between the steroid hormones estradiol (E2), testosterone (T), cortisol (CRT) and dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEAS), memory and mood were investigated in men, in women estrogen-users and non-users, and in patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In Study 1, 72 year-old healthy men and women estrogen-users performed better than estrogen non-users on Forward and Total Digit Span, which test attention and short-term memory, concomitant with their higher E2 levels. The estrogen-users performed better than the men and the non-users on Delayed Selective Reminding, a test of explicit verbal memory. Men and women with higher CRT levels performed worse on several explicit verbal memory tests compared to those with lower endogenous, CRT levels. In Study 2, male patients with AD performed better than estrogen non-using women with AD on several everyday memory tests, and women estrogen-users with AD performed similarly to the men. Both the men and estrogen-users had higher levels of E2 than the non-users. AD patients with higher endogenous levels of DHEAS performed better than those with lower levels on several everyday memory tests, and AD patients with higher CRT levels were impaired on one aspect of everyday spatial memory, Route Recall. In Study 3, no differences in hormone levels between AD patients and age-matched healthy elderly controls were found. The AD patients were most severely impaired on tasks involving explicit verbal recall compared to healthy controls, and least impaired on short-term memory and concentration tasks. The AD patients reported more dysphoric mood and mental dulling symptoms than healthy age-matched controls, but they did not report feeling less positive about the future. Taken together, these results suggest that higher levels of DHEAS and E2 are related to better memory performance in both healthy elderly men and women and in patients with AD, and higher CRT levels are associated with poorer explicit verbal memory performanc
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.34924 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Carlson, Linda E. |
| Contributors | Sherwin, Barbara B. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001642138, proquestno: NQ44379, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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