Context Memory in Alzheimer's Disease

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by a gradual loss of memory. Specifically, context aspects of memory are impaired in AD. Our review sheds light on the neurocognitive mechanisms of this memory component that forms the core of episodic memory function. SUMMARY: Context recall, an element of episodic memory, refers to remembering the context in which an event has occurred, such as from whom or to whom information has been transmitted. KEY MESSAGES: Our review raises crucial questions. For example, (1) which context element is more prone to being forgotten in the disease? (2) How do AD patients fail to bind context features together? (3) May distinctiveness heuristic or decisions based on metacognitive expectations improve context retrieval in these patients? (4) How does cueing at retrieval enhance reinstating of encoding context in AD? By addressing these questions, our work contributes to the understanding of the memory deficits in AD.