Memory Impairment in MS Correlates to Hemodynamic Response in Event-Related FMRI of Episodic Memory

Katherine A. Koenig¹, Blessy Mathew¹, Jian Lin¹, Lael Stone², Stephen Rao³, Michael Phillips¹, Mark J. Lowe¹

Nineteen patients with MS performed a verbal incidental encoding task, followed by a word recognition task (WR). Stimuli from the WR task were split into encoded and non-encoded based on performance of each subject. The encoded stimuli of the five highest performers were used to create an average t-map to select regions of interest for a correlation analysis. Areas involved in semantic encoding, including the DLPFC and the inferior frontal gyrus, showed a significant positive correlation between the fit hemodynamic response amplitude during encoded stimuli on the WR task and a test of verbal memory.