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Leading theories of affect development and empirical studies suggest that emotion can enhance memory in older adults. Destination memory which is defined as the ability to remember to whom we told a piece of information is being found to be compromised in aging. In the present study, we sought to assess destination memory using emotional stimuli (Emotional Destination Memory, EDM) in 16 older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 16 healthy controls and shed light onto its potential neurophysiological aspects. We measured Mu suppression in frontal and temporal regions via EEG in real time while participants performed the task of EDM. Results showed no group differences in task performance but significant differences in fronto-temporal activations, specifically in electrodes F7 and F8. Differential Mu rhythm pattern was observed between healthy controls and MCI with the first exhibiting Mu suppression and the last Mu enhancement. Furthermore, Mu enhancement in temporal electrodes within the MCI group was associated with lower scores on EDM. The absence of group differences in the task can be explained by the fact that even if there are underlying structural or functional deficits in the MCI group, these deficits are manifested only at neurophysiological level and not at a behavioral level, which is a common pattern in the process of cognitive decline in its initial phases. The overall findings reveal that, even if there are not any behavioral decrements in MCI patients, they show reduced activations in fronto-temporal regions and this can be attributed to general impairment in emotional destination memory due to possible mirror neuron deficiency.

Aim: Although the ability to recognize emotions through bodily and facial muscular movements is vital to everyday life, numerous studies have found that older adults are less adept at identifying emotions than younger adults. The message gleaned from research has been one of greater decline in abilities to recognize specific negative emotions than positive ones. At the same time, these results raise methodological issues with regard to different modalities in which emotion decoding is measured. The main aim of the present study is to identify the pattern of age differences in the ability to decode basic emotions from naturalistic visual emotional displays., Method: The sample comprised a total of 208 adults from Greece, aged from 18 to 86 years. Participants were examined using the Emotion Evaluation Test, which is the first part of a broader audiovisual tool, The Awareness of Social Inference Test. The Emotion Evaluation Test was designed to examine a person's ability to identify six emotions and discriminate these from neutral expressions, as portrayed dynamically by professional actors., Results: The findings indicate that decoding of basic emotions occurs along the broad affective dimension of uncertainty, and a basic step in emotion decoding involves recognizing whether information presented is emotional or not. Age was found to negatively affect the ability to decode basic negatively valenced emotions as well as pleasant surprise. Happiness decoding is the only ability that was found well-preserved with advancing age., Conclusion: The main conclusion drawn from the study is that the pattern in which emotion decoding from visual cues is affected by normal ageing depends on the rate of uncertainty, which either is related to decoding difficulties or is inherent to a specific emotion., (© 2013 The Authors. Psychogeriatrics © 2013 Japanese Psychogeriatric Society.)