engleski

Impaired learning of motor skills in patients with multiple sclerosis

A group of 55 right-handed inpatients that had met Poser's diagnostic criteria for multiple sclerosis (MS) were matched with a control group of 42 right-handed volunteers in age, sex, and education. The subjects' implicit learning was examined using a computerized test the Motor Skills Task. The task was repeated 10 times for each hand separately. Following variables were analyzed during the trials: total path distances (TD), distance off the target (DOT), time off the target (TOT), and the index DOT/TOT. No difference was found between the subject groups during their TD performance. Patients with MS had in comparison to the controls lower scores on the total DOT performance (p<0.02), longer total TOT (p<0.01), and poorer total index DOT/TOT (p<0.05). During repeated trials the patients had never reached total motor skill performance of the control group. When the performance was analyzed for each hand separately, only the left-hand performances of patients with MS were statistically different from the controls. Lesions of the white matter in a nondominat brain hemisphere had probably caused alteration of the visual-spatial attention that might have contributed to the patients' impairment of motor skill learning.

multiple sclerosis; memory impairment

nije evidentirano