The degree of cortical plasticity correlates with cognitive performance in patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

Balloff, Carolin; Penner, Iris-Katharina; Ma, Meng; Georgiades, Iason; Scala, Lina; Troullinakis, Nina; Graf, Jonas; Kremer, David; Aktas, Orhan; Hartung, Hans-Peter; Meuth, Sven Günther; Schnitzler, Alfons; Groiss, Stefan Jun; Albrecht, Philipp (2022). The degree of cortical plasticity correlates with cognitive performance in patients with Multiple Sclerosis. Brain stimulation, 15(2), pp. 403-413. Elsevier 10.1016/j.brs.2022.02.007

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BACKGROUND

Cortical reorganization and plasticity may compensate for structural damage in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). It is important to establish sensitive methods to measure these compensatory mechanisms, as they may be of prognostic value.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the association between the degree of cortical plasticity and cognitive performance and to compare plasticity between MS patients and healthy controls (HCs).

METHODS

The amplitudes of the motor evoked potential (MEP) pre and post quadripulse stimulation (QPS) applied over the contralateral motor cortex served as measure of the degree of cortical plasticity in 63 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) and 55 matched HCs. The main outcomes were the correlation coefficients between the difference of MEP amplitudes post and pre QPS and the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) and Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R), and the QPSxgroup interaction in a mixed model predicting the MEP amplitude.

RESULTS

SDMT and BVMT-R correlated significantly with QPS-induced cortical plasticity in RRMS patients. Plasticity was significantly reduced in patients with cognitive impairment compared to patients with preserved cognitive function and the degree of plasticity differentiated between both patient groups. Interestingly, the overall RRMS patient cohort did not show reduced plasticity compared to HCs.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide first evidence that QPS-induced plasticity may inform about the global synaptic plasticity in RRMS which correlates with cognitive performance as well as clinical disability. Larger longitudinal studies on patients with MS are needed to investigate the relevance and prognostic value of this measure for disease progression and recovery.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Department of Head Organs and Neurology (DKNS) > Clinic of Neurology

UniBE Contributor:

Penner, Iris-Katharina

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health

ISSN:

1935-861X

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

21 Feb 2022 09:41

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 16:09

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.brs.2022.02.007

PubMed ID:

35182811

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Cognition Cortical plasticity Multiple sclerosis Quadripulse stimulation Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/165753

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/165753

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