1. Cortical thinning in the anterior cingulate cortex predicts multiple sclerosis patients' fluency performance in a lateralised manner
- Author
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Bernhard Schuknecht, Olivia Geisseler, Katja Reuter, Tobias Pflugshaupt, David Weller, Ladina Bezzola, Peter Brugger, Michael Linnebank, University of Zurich, and Geisseler, Olivia
- Subjects
Male ,Neuropsychological Tests ,VLSM, voxel-lesion symptom mapping ,Functional Laterality ,lcsh:RC346-429 ,0302 clinical medicine ,Verbal fluency test ,MPRAGE, magnetization prepared rapid gradient-echo imaging ,Cerebral Cortex ,10093 Institute of Psychology ,05 social sciences ,Cognitive flexibility ,Regular Article ,Cognition ,Executive functions ,Magnetic Resonance Imaging ,Memory, Short-Term ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,2728 Neurology (clinical) ,Neurology ,FLAIR, fluid attenuated inversion recovery ,lcsh:R858-859.7 ,Female ,Psychology ,Adult ,2805 Cognitive Neuroscience ,FDR, false discovery rate ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,UFSP13-4 Dynamics of Healthy Aging ,lcsh:Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics ,Gyrus Cinguli ,Speech Disorders ,050105 experimental psychology ,EDSS, Expanded Disability Status Scale ,MS, multiple sclerosis ,Multiple sclerosis ,03 medical and health sciences ,Fluency ,Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting ,Executive function ,medicine ,Humans ,2741 Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and imaging ,Anterior cingulate cortex ,lcsh:Neurology. Diseases of the nervous system ,TVW, third ventricle width ,Working memory ,Cortical thinning ,10040 Clinic for Neurology ,DoktoratPsych Erstautor ,2808 Neurology ,Neurology (clinical) ,Atrophy ,150 Psychology ,Neuroscience ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Executive dysfunction - Abstract
Cognitive impairment is as an important feature of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and might be even more relevant to patients than mobility restrictions. Compared to the multitude of studies investigating memory deficits or basic cognitive slowing, executive dysfunction is a rarely studied cognitive domain in MS, and its neural correlates remain largely unexplored. Even rarer are topological studies on specific cognitive functions in MS. Here we used several structural MRI parameters – including cortical thinning and T2 lesion load – to investigate neural correlates of executive dysfunction, both on a global and a regional level by means of voxel- and vertex-wise analyses. Forty-eight patients with relapsing-remitting MS and 48 healthy controls participated in the study. Five executive functions were assessed, i.e. verbal and figural fluency, working memory, interference control and set shifting. Patients scored lower than controls in verbal and figural fluency only, and displayed widespread cortical thinning. On a global level, cortical thickness independently predicted verbal fluency performance, when controlling for lesion volume and central brain atrophy estimates. On a regional level, cortical thinning in the anterior cingulate region correlated with deficits in verbal and figural fluency and did so in a lateralised manner: Left-sided thinning was related to reduced verbal – but not figural – fluency, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for right-sided thinning. We conclude that executive dysfunction in MS patients can specifically affect verbal and figural fluency. The observed lateralised clinico-anatomical correlation has previously been described in brain-damaged patients with large focal lesions only, for example after stroke. Based on focal grey matter atrophy, we here show for the first time comparable lateralised findings in a white matter disease with widespread pathology., Highlights • Executive dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) can specifically affect fluency. • Fluency deficits in MS correlate with thinning of the anterior cingulate cortex. • This correlation seems lateralised and modality-specific.
- Published
- 2016