Emotional Perception and Memory in Alcoholism and Aging

The ability to identify and recognize emotional materials was studied in 10 male alcoholic Korsakoff patients, 27 male non-Korsakoff alcoholics, and 31 male nonalcoholic controls, across a wide age range (23 to 77 years). Stimulus materials were presented in two sensory modalities; the materials were photographs of faces expressing one of four emotions (happy, sad, angry, or neutral), and recordings of sentences with emotional intonations or semantic meanings expressing the same four emotions. Results of the experiments showed consistently severe deficits in emotional functions in the Korsakoff patients, but only minor alterations in the non-Korsakoff alcoholics. Older subjects, whether or not they had a history of alcoholism, also exhibited significant deficits on most of the tasks. Results of the study did not provide strong support for the premature aging hypothesis of alcoholism, which suggests that alcoholism accelerates aging, beginning either at the onset of heavy drinking early in adult life, or later in life after the normal manifestations of aging have begun to appear. Results are related to brain mechanisms in emotional perception and memory functions.