Cognitive Impairment in Multiple Sclerosis Is Reflected by Increased Susceptibility to the Sound-Induced Flash Illusion

Conclusions: 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. Introduction Depending on the disease course, employed methods and cut-off-scores, prevalence rates of cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS) vary between 40 and 70% (1, 2). Due to financial, personnel and time limitations in the clinical routine, sometimes mild cognitive deficits in MS are not subjected to a further diagnostic investigation. An inexpensive, easy to apply language-independent screening tool for global cognitive deficits would facilitate the neuropsychological diagnostic process in MS. The typical profile of neuropsychological impairment in MS encompasses slowed cognitive processing speed, episodic memory deficits, executive dysfunction, impaired verbal fluency, and visuospatial perception (3). Neuroimaging as well as neuropathological findings suggest that cortical regions as well as white matter tracts and deep gray matter areas whic...
Source: Frontiers in Neurology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research