Yalachkov Yavor, Bergmann Heinrich Johannes, Soydaş Dilara, Buschenlange Christian, Fadai Motlagh Laura Yasmine, Naumer Marcus J, Kaiser Jochen, Frisch Stefan, Behrens Marion, Foerch Christian, Gehrig Johannes
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Institute of Medical Psychology, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Front Neurol. 2019 Apr 12;10:373. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2019.00373. eCollection 2019.
To determine whether the performance of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients in the sound-induced flash illusion (SiFi), a multisensory perceptual illusion, would reflect their cognitive impairment. We performed the SiFi task as well as an extensive neuropsychological testing in 95 subjects [39 patients with relapse-remitting MS (RRMS), 16 subjects with progressive multiple sclerosis (PMS) and 40 healthy control subjects (HC)]. MS patients reported more frequently the multisensory SiFi than HC. In contrast, there were no group differences in the control conditions. Essentially, patients with progressive type of MS continued to perceive the illusion at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) that were more than three times longer than the SOA at which the illusion was already disrupted for healthy controls. Furthermore, MS patients' degree of cognitive impairment measured with a broad neuropsychological battery encompassing tests for memory, attention, executive functions, and fluency was predicted by their performance in the SiFi task for the longest SOA of 500 ms. These findings support the notion that MS patients exhibit an altered multisensory perception in the SiFi task and that their susceptibility to the perceptual illusion is negatively correlated with their neuropsychological test performance. Since MS lesions affect white matter tracts and cortical regions which seem to be involved in the transfer and processing of both crossmodal and cognitive information, this might be one possible explanation for our findings. SiFi might be considered as a brief, non-expensive, language- and education-independent screening test for cognitive deficits in MS patients.
为了确定多发性硬化症（MS）患者在声音诱发闪光错觉（SiFi，一种多感官知觉错觉）中的表现是否会反映其认知障碍。我们对95名受试者[39名复发缓解型多发性硬化症（RRMS）患者、16名进行性多发性硬化症（PMS）患者和40名健康对照者（HC）]进行了SiFi任务以及广泛的神经心理学测试。MS患者比HC更频繁地报告多感官SiFi。相比之下，在对照条件下没有组间差异。从本质上讲，进行性MS患者在刺激起始异步（SOA）时仍能感知错觉，该SOA比健康对照者错觉已被破坏时的SOA长三倍以上。此外，通过包括记忆、注意力、执行功能和流畅性测试在内的广泛神经心理学测试所测量的MS患者认知障碍程度，可由他们在最长500毫秒SOA的SiFi任务中的表现预测。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即MS患者在SiFi任务中表现出改变的多感官知觉，并且他们对错觉的易感性与神经心理学测试表现呈负相关。由于MS病变会影响白质束和皮质区域，而这些区域似乎参与了跨模态和认知信息的传递与处理，这可能是我们研究结果的一种可能解释。SiFi可被视为一种针对MS患者认知缺陷的简短、廉价、与语言和教育无关的筛查测试。
