What can preservation of autobiographic memory after muscarinic blockade tell us about the scopolamine model of dementia?

Autobiographic memory is reported to be impaired in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). To determine if cholinergic blockade fully reproduces the amnestic disorder found in dementia, we evaluated aspects of autobiographic and episodic memory in six healthy elderly controls after both scopolamine and placebo administration compared with untreated age- and education-matched patients with AD. The performance of patients with AD was significantly worse than that of controls after both treatment conditions. Scopolamine impaired episodic but not autobiographic memory. Thus, even though the cholinergic system is severely affected in patients with AD, muscarinic blockade alone does not seem to be a good model of this disorder.