Functional cerebral changes in multiple sclerosis patients during an autobiographical memory test

Abstract

Our aim was to investigate the functional underpinnings of autobiographical memory (AM) impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. To that end, 18 patients and 18 controls underwent the autobiographical interview (AI). Subsequently, the 36 participants underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session designed to assess the construction and elaboration of AMs. A categorical control task was also presented. Patients were trained in the fMRI procedure to optimise the procedural aspects accompanying the task itself. Although the patients obtained significantly poorer AI scores (p < .001), their performance on the easier AM fMRI task was efficiently carried out, allowing relevant comparisons with healthy controls. Relatively to healthy controls, the patients showed increased and bilateral cerebral activations (p < .005) during the construction and elaboration phases. The prefrontal, temporal and posterior cerebral region activations were located within the core network sustaining AM, with the bilateral prefrontal region being centrally involved. The parametric neural responses to the difficulty of access and amount of details of memories were also significantly different for the two groups, with the right hippocampal region showing a particularly increased recruitment (p < .005). The findings suggested the presence of functional cerebral changes during AM performance and supported the presence of AM retrieval deficit in MS patients.

Keywords:

• Cerebral activation changes
• Multiple sclerosis
• Autobiographical memory
• Autobiographical interview
• Functional MRI

We thank C. Vinet-Gasse and A. Botzung for helping with testing and V. Voltzenlogel for interrater reliability scoring, N. Heider, S. Graves, F. Ernwein, A. Clerc-Renault, E. Montaut and the NCC MA students for the transcriptions of the AI audio-recordings. We are grateful to the “Imagerie in vivo” Platform (ICube laboratory), where the MRI examination was realised, the CIC of the Strasbourg University Hospitals, where patients and controls were examined, C. Marrer for the fMRI technical assistance and O. Després for initial participation in E Prime programming.

We are grateful to the “Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Sclérose en Plaques” (ARSEP; Ile de France; grant to L.M) for research funding and to the Ministry of National Education and Research (A.E.’s Ph.D. grant).

We thank C. Vinet-Gasse and A. Botzung for helping with testing and V. Voltzenlogel for interrater reliability scoring, N. Heider, S. Graves, F. Ernwein, A. Clerc-Renault, E. Montaut and the NCC MA students for the transcriptions of the AI audio-recordings. We are grateful to the “Imagerie in vivo” Platform (ICube laboratory), where the MRI examination was realised, the CIC of the Strasbourg University Hospitals, where patients and controls were examined, C. Marrer for the fMRI technical assistance and O. Després for initial participation in E Prime programming.

We are grateful to the “Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Sclérose en Plaques” (ARSEP; Ile de France; grant to L.M) for research funding and to the Ministry of National Education and Research (A.E.’s Ph.D. grant).