Emotional and neutral verbal memory impairment in Multiple Sclerosis.
BACKGROUND
A defective emotional enhancement of verbal memory (VM) performances has been reported in different neurological diseases.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the emotional enhancement of VM in 22 Clinically Isolated Syndrome (CIS) suggestive of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and 49 Relapsing (RR) MS patients in comparison to 32 Healthy Controls (HC).


METHODS
Immediate and delayed recall of VM was assessed using the Selective Reminding Test (SRT). A list of 12 emotionally significant words was used to evaluate the Emotional (E) variants of the SRT. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory.


RESULTS
The prevalence of depression did not differ between RRMS and CIS patients. Both patient groups showed poorer (p<0.01) VM performances in comparison to HC in all the SRT tasks, but no difference was found between the two patient groups. Emotionally salient words were more (p<0.0001) recalled than neutral words in HC and CIS, but not in RRMS patients, while performing the immediate recall tasks. Delayed recall was not affected by emotional stimuli in both CIS and RR MS groups. The presence of depressive symptoms did not influence the VM performances.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results demonstrate a defective emotional enhancement of VM in definite MS and, although to a lesser extent, in CIS patients.
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Neurosciences and Sense Organs, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.
Pietro
P
Iaffaldano
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Neurosciences and Sense Organs, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.
Rosa Gemma
RG
Viterbo
Department of Neurology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Benedetta
B
Goretti
Department of Neurology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Emilio
E
Portaccio
Department of Neurology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Maria Pia
MP
Amato
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Neurosciences and Sense Organs, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy. Electronic address: maria.trojano@uniba.it.
Maria
M
Trojano
D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000150:complications*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
CIS; Cognitive impairment; Emotion processing; Emotional enhancement; Multiple Sclerosis; Verbal memory