The temporal organization and quality of life story memories in Alzheimer disease and healthy controls.

Objective: Autobiographical memory has been studied in Alzheimer's disease (AD) by asking for a specified number of memories from a few defined life periods. The present study tests whether a retrograde temporal gradient and a change in the quality of memory specificity is confirmed when using a temporally less restrained access to autobiographical memory. Also, we intended to explore the temporal macrostructure of entire life narratives in AD and to study in more detail the distribution of memories across the past life and the narrativity of memory reports.