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Abstract #4671

PRAGMATIC ABILITIES IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS PATIENTS: AN RS-fMRI STUDY

Sirio Cocozza1, Antonio Carotenuto2, Mario Quarantelli3, Giorgio Arcara4, Vincenzo Brescia Morra2, Enrico Tedeschi1, Giuseppe Orefice2, Valentina Bambini5, Rosa Iodice2, and Arturo Brunetti1

1Department of Advanced Biomedical Sciences, University of Naples "Federico II", Naples, Italy, 2University of Naples "Federico II", Naples, Italy, 3Institute of Biostructure and Bioimaging, National Research Council, Naples, Italy, 4Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS, Pavia, Italy, 55. IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo, Venice, Italy

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients could experience communicative deficits in “pragmatics”, which is the ability to integrate context-dependent aspects of meaning beyond structural components of language. We evaluated relationships between pragmatics and functional connectivity (FC) of the bilateral inferior parietal lobule (the so-called Geschwind’s areas -GA-), in MS patients via a seed-based Resting-State fMRI analysis. We found a direct correlation between pragmatic scores and FC of both right (p=0.003) and left (p=0.009) GAs with the paracingulate cortex. Our results suggest that language is not only a left hemisphere function, and highlight a possible central role of paracingulate cortex in pragmatics.

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