Imaging Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Schey Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Mult Scler. 2019 Apr;25(4):574-584. doi: 10.1177/1352458518760716. Epub 2018 Mar 7.
Episodic memory loss is one of the most common cognitive symptoms in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), but the pathophysiology of this symptom remains unclear. Both the hippocampus and thalamus have been implicated in episodic memory and show regional atrophy in patients with MS.
In this work, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a verbal episodic memory task, lesion load, and volumetric measures of the hippocampus and thalamus to assess the relative contributions to verbal and visual-spatial episodic memory.
Functional activation, lesion load, and volumetric measures from 32 patients with MS and 16 healthy controls were used in a predictive analysis of episodic memory function.
After adjusting for disease duration, immediate recall performance on a visual-spatial episodic memory task was significantly predicted by hippocampal volume ( p < 0.003). Delayed recall on the same task was significantly predicted by volume of the left thalamus ( p < 0.003). For both memory measures, functional activation of the thalamus during encoding was more predictive than that of volume measures ( p < 0.002).
Our results suggest that functional activation may be useful as a predictive measure of episodic memory loss in patients with MS.
发作性记忆缺失是多发性硬化症（MS）患者最常见的认知症状之一，但该症状的病理生理学仍不清楚。海马体和丘脑都与发作性记忆有关，在 MS 患者中显示出区域性萎缩。
在这项工作中，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）在言语发作性记忆任务期间、病变负荷以及海马体和丘脑的体积测量中，评估对言语和视觉空间发作性记忆的相对贡献。
对 32 名 MS 患者和 16 名健康对照者的功能激活、病变负荷和体积测量值进行了预测分析。
在调整疾病持续时间后，视觉空间发作性记忆任务的即时回忆表现显著受海马体体积的预测（p < 0.003）。同一任务的延迟回忆显著受左丘脑体积的预测（p < 0.003）。对于这两种记忆测量，在编码过程中丘脑的功能激活比体积测量更具预测性（p < 0.002）。
我们的结果表明，功能激活可能是预测 MS 患者发作性记忆丧失的有用指标。
