This preliminary study tackles the assessment and treatment of autobiographical memory (AbM) in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RR-MS) patients. Our aim was to investigate cerebral activation changes, following clinical improvement of AbM due to a cognitive training based on mental visual imagery (MVI). We assessed AbM using the Autobiographical Interview (AI) in eight patients and 15 controls. The latter subjects established normative data. The eight patients showed selective defective performance on the AI. Four patients were trained cognitively and underwent pre- and post-AI and fMRI. The remaining four patients took a second AI, at the same interval, but with no intervention in between. Results showed a significant improvement of AbM performance after the facilitation programme that could not be explained by learning effects since the AI scores remained stable between the two assessments in the second group of patients. As expected, AbM improvement was accompanied by an increased cerebral activity in posterior cerebral regions in post-facilitation fMRI examination. We interpret this activation changes in terms of reflecting the emphasis made on the role of MVI in memory retrieval through the facilitation programme. These preliminary significant clinical and neuroimaging changes suggest the beneficial effects of this technique to alleviate AbM retrieval deficit in MS patients. 1. Introduction Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease characterised by the multifocal nature of neurological lesions in the central nervous system, which results in demyelination, white and grey matter injuries and/or atrophy [1]. As a consequence of the cooccurrence of lesions, a wide range of symptoms can be observed in MS, including cognitive impairment [2]. Deficits on cognitive domains as anterograde memory, executive functions, attentional processes, or information processing speed have been described [3] and a number of clinical studies have also developed different cognitive rehabilitation programmes for MS patients [4]. However, very few studies have been carried out in MS to investigate autobiographical memory (AbM). Briefly stated, AbM is the capacity to relive detailed events, evoking the spatiotemporal context, in which they were encountered, as they are remembered [5]. AbM deficit in MS has been debated in the literature despite the comparatively modest number of works on the topic. Paul et al. [6] found personal semantics impairment in MS patients, while Kenealy et al. [7] observed episodic personal memory deficits, but these studies did not
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