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The low use of analgesics in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), compared to nondemented elderly per-sons, is generally explained by (1) a lower prevalence of painful conditions in the former group and (2) under-treatment of pain due to a decrease in communicative abilities in AD. However, considering the neuropatholo-gy in limbic areas in this disorder, a decline in pain affect may also explain this phenomenon. In the present study, a newly developed questionnaire was applied to 20 elderly persons without dementia, 20 patients in an early stage and 20 patients in a midstage of AD. The question-naire includes 10 pairs of painful situations, each pair consisting of an acute and a chronic affective painful situ-ation. It was hypothesized that, compared to controls, A