False memories in relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis patients: a preliminary investigation with the DRM paradigm

Background Memory impairment is one of the most frequently and early detected impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Several authors have argued that when a failure occurs in the retrieval of lexical information, this might be due to a reduction of the lexical pool, related to semantic memory. Here we further investigated memory alteration in MS patients, by focusing on memory distortions (i.e., false memories) for semantically-related material. Methods A group of 40 consecutive relapsing remitting MS (RRMS) patients and a matched control group of 40 healthy controls performed the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM), a false memory task for lists of associated words. Results At recall, RRMS patients reported a reduced number of false recalls for semantically-related but non-presented items (i.e., critical false recalls) compared to HCs; at recognition, RRMS patients showed a reduced level of confidence for false recognitions of critical items. Conclusion We found a reduced susceptibility to false memories in RRMS patients compared to HCs. The potential mechanisms underlying this effect are discussed in light of the alterations in the structure of semantic memory.