Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada.
Neurology. 2012 Sep 11;79(11):1124-9. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182698da3. Epub 2012 Aug 29.
Inattentional blindness refers to a phenomenon in which individuals fail to notice an object in plain sight. Present in healthy, cognitively intact individuals, it has not been studied in patients with MS in whom it could theoretically act as a marker for real-world cognitive difficulties in those deemed cognitively intact on conventional neuropsychological batteries. Our hypothesis was that difficulty sustaining attention in patients with MS would paradoxically be associated with less inattentional blindness.
A cross-sectional study was undertaken in which a consecutive sample of 68 patients with MS completed neuropsychological testing with the Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in Multiple Sclerosis (MACFIMS) battery. Two additional tests were administered, the Stroop Test and a measure of inattentional blindness, i.e., the gorilla in the room paradigm. The gorilla test elicited 2 variables: the ability to detect the gorilla and the number of times a ball was passed between members of one team.
Cognitive dysfunction by MACFIMS criteria was present in 36.8 of subjects. There were no differences between patients with MS and healthy control subjects on the gorilla indices. Similarly, no inattentional differences were present between cognitively intact and impaired patients with MS. However, patients with MS who were impaired on the Stroop and 2-second Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test were more likely than their intact counterparts to detect the gorilla (p = 0.038 and 0.014, respectively), with Stroop-impaired patients detecting fewer ball passes (p = 0.002).
The results support our hypothesis that less inattentional blindness is associated with heightened distractibility. This may explain why some patients with MS deemed cognitively intact on a battery of tests such as the MACFIMS still struggle with real-world challenges such as multitasking and filtering distracting stimuli.
疏忽性盲视是指个体未能注意到眼前明显物体的一种现象。这种现象存在于健康、认知正常的个体中，但尚未在多发性硬化症（MS）患者中进行研究，因为从理论上讲，在那些被认为认知能力正常的患者中，它可能是现实世界认知困难的标志物。我们的假设是，MS 患者维持注意力的困难与较少的疏忽性盲视有关。
进行了一项横断面研究，其中连续纳入了 68 例 MS 患者，他们完成了多发性硬化症最小认知功能评估（MACFIMS）电池的神经心理学测试。还进行了两项额外的测试，即斯特鲁普测试和疏忽性盲视测试，即房间里的大猩猩范式。大猩猩测试引出了 2 个变量：检测大猩猩的能力和一个团队成员之间传球的次数。
根据 MACFIMS 标准，有 36.8%的受试者存在认知功能障碍。MS 患者和健康对照组在大猩猩指数上没有差异。同样，认知正常和受损的 MS 患者之间也没有出现疏忽性差异。然而，在斯特鲁普和 2 秒定时听觉连续加法测试中受损的 MS 患者比他们认知正常的患者更有可能检测到大猩猩（p = 0.038 和 0.014），斯特鲁普受损的患者检测到的传球次数更少（p = 0.002）。
结果支持我们的假设，即较少的疏忽性盲视与注意力分散度增加有关。这可能解释了为什么一些被认为认知能力正常的 MS 患者在 MACFIMS 等一系列测试中仍难以应对现实世界的挑战，如多任务处理和过滤干扰性刺激。
