Action naming in Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a progressive disease characterized by the demyelination of the central nervous system fibers and has several motor and cognitive consequences. Its well known that patients with MS show cognitive impairment in many areas: speed of information processing, memory, attention, and executive functions. Recent study conducted in our laboratory showed MS patients impaired in recognition of chimerical figures, respect to real objects or animals. Mental imagery and mental representation of movement have been showed impaired in disease involving motor system as consequence of degenerative pathologies of central nervous system, such as Parkinson’s disease. Aim of the present study was to investigate the performance of patients affected by relapsing/remitting MS in recognizing and naming actions with high movement implications respect to action with low movement contents. Twenty patients affected by Relapsing/Remitting MS and twenty matched healthy subjects (HG), age range 20 to 50, have been presented with an experimental tasks composed by 100 stimuli, 50 high movement and 50 low movement content. Each stimulus consisted in the picture of an action; the subjects were asked to name it. All subjects performed an extensive neuropsychological battery in order to assess their cognitive status. Preliminary analysis seems to confirm our hypothesis: MS patients have significantly worst performances in recognizing and naming actions with high movements contents respect to actions with low movements contents, while no significative differences where in the healthy subjects group. More analysis will be performed in order to explore the role of EDSS and of the years of illness.