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Background and Purpose: To analyse the prospect of memory training for patients with organic brain damage., Methods: Sixty-two patients with memory disorder were assigned to three different groups: a control group (n=16) with low dose memory training, a process oriented memory training group (POT) (n=24) and a group (ST) who was taught to compensate for memory problems with different strategies (n=22). Most of the patients had suffered a stroke. Inclusion criteria were medium to weak memory impairment defined by the patients' performance in the California Verbal Learning Test. Patients with complete amnesia were excluded. Specific care was taken that the groups did not differ in age, time since illness, duration of rehabilitation effort, verbal and performance IQ, memory and attention performance. The two treatment groups received 20 hours memory training, the low dose memory training control group 7 sessions., Results: The treatment groups improved in verbal and prospective memory, but only the group with POT experienced a significant improvement compared with the control group. Training effects were specific, i. e. they affected verbal memory, but were not encapsulated, i. e. generalized to the recall of prose passages and of appointments. The POT group also showed a statistically weak outperformance compared with the ST group and some attentional improvement as well., Conclusion: Memory training is effective in patients with organic brain lesion, but only if applied frequently. Comparing the two training high intensity treatments, a POT focus seems to be superior to teaching a set of compensation strategies.

Objective: To compare the neuropsychological deficits of primary progressive multiple sclerosis with those of relapsing-remitting and secondary progressive multiple sclerosis., Methods: Sixty-five patients with different clinical courses of MS were neuropsychologically tested for language, attention, memory and executive functions. Discriminant analysis was used to predict the type of clinical course either by clinical variables (age, EDSS and duration of illness) or neuropsychological test results., Results: For single neuropsychological tests, group differences were rare between the progressive courses and the relapsing-remitting course of MS or absent between the progressive courses of MS. However, discriminant analysis correctly identified 87.7 percent of the patients' courses in general, and about 90 percent of the patients with chronic progressive MS., Conclusion: Using discriminant analysis, this study found neuropsychological impairment characteristic for relapsing remitting, secondary progressive and primary progressive patients.