Objective . To assess the ability of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients to perceive emotional information and to assign subjective emotional rating scores to audiovisual presentations. Materials and Methods . 24 subjects (14 with AD, matched to controls for age and educational levels) were studied. After neuropsychological assessment, they watched a Neutral story and then a story with Emotional content. Results . Recall scores for both stories were significantly lower in AD (Neutral and Emotional:<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>P</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>.001</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math>). CG assigned different emotional scores for each version of the test,<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>P</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>.001</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math>, while ratings of AD did not differ,<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>P</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>.32</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math>. Linear regression analyses determined the best predictors of emotional rating and recognition memory for each group among neuropsychological tests battery. Conclusions . AD patients show changes in emotional processing on declarative memory and a preserved ability to express emotions in face of arousal content. The present findings suggest that these impairments are due to general cognitive decline.