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Distinct and common cerebral activation changes during mental time travel in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients

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Abstract

Mental time travel (MTT) entails the ability to mentally travel into autobiographical memory (AM) and episodic future thinking (EFT). While AM and EFT share common phenomenological and cerebral functional properties, distinctive characteristics have been documented in healthy and clinical populations. No report, to our knowledge, has informed on the functional underpinnings of MTT impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, hence the aim of this work. We studied 22 relapsing-remitting MS patients and 22 matched controls. Participants underwent an AM/EFT assessment using the Autobiographical Interview (Levine et al. 2002), followed by a functional MRI session. The latter consisted in AM and EFT tasks, distinguishing the construction and elaboration phases of events. The results showed impaired performance for AM and EFT in patients, accompanied by increased cerebral activations mostly located in the frontal regions, which extended to the parietal, lateral temporal and posterior regions during AM/EFT tasks, relative to healthy controls. Enhanced brain activations in MS patients were particularly evident during the EFT task and involved the hippocampus, frontal, external temporal, and cingulate regions. The construction phase required greater fronto-parieto-temporal activations in MS patients relative to both healthy controls, and the elaboration phase. Taking together, our results suggested the occurrence of cerebral activation changes in the context of MTT in MS patients, expressed by distinct and common mechanisms for AM and EFT. This study may provide new insights in terms of cerebral activation changes in brain lesion and their application to clinical settings, considering AM/EFT’s central role in everyday life.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the “Fondation pour la Recherchesur la Sclérose en Plaques” (ARSEP; Ile de France; grant to L.M) for research funding and to the Ministry of National Education and Research (A.E.’s PhD grant). AE is now a postdoctoral researcher in the LEAD (CNRS UMR5022) at the University of Burgundy, supported by a research funding from the Region Bourgogne (France) accorded to Dr. Chris Moulin and Dr. Céline Souchay (LEAD, CNRS UMR5022, University of Burgundy). We thank Dr. B. Levine for personal communication of the AI to LM. We also thank C. Vinet-Gasse, B. Journault and A. Botzung for helping with testing and V. Voltzenlogel for interrater reliability scoring, N. Heider, S. Graves, F. Ernwein, A. Clerc-Renault, E. Montaut and the NCC MA students for the transcriptions of the AI audio-recordings. We are grateful to the “Imagerie in vivo” Platform (ICube laboratory), where the MRI sessions were done, the CIC of the Strasbourg University Hospitals, where patients and controls were examined, C. Marrer for fMRI technical assistance and O. Després for initial participation in E Prime programming.

A. Ernst, V. Noblet, E. Denkova, F. Blanc, J. De Seze, D. Gounot, and L. Manning  declare no competing financial interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Neuropsychology and Physiopathology of Schizophrenia (INSERM UMR 1114), 67000, Strasbourg, France

    A. Ernst & L. Manning

  2. Psychology Department, University of Strasbourg, 12, rue Goethe, Strasbourg, 6700, France

    A. Ernst, V. Noblet, F. Blanc, J. De Seze, D. Gounot & L. Manning

  3. ICube laboratory (CNRS; UMR 7357), Fédération de Médecine translationnelle de Strasbourg (FMTS), 67000, Strasbourg, France

    V. Noblet, F. Blanc & D. Gounot

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Miami, Fl, 33158, USA

    E. Denkova

  5. Department of Neurology and Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche (CMRR), University Hospital of Strasbourg, 67000, Strasbourg, France

    F. Blanc & J. De Seze

  6. INSERM U1114, 1, Place de l’Hôpital, 67000, Strasbourg, France

    L. Manning

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Ernst, A., Noblet, V., Denkova, E. et al. Distinct and common cerebral activation changes during mental time travel in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients. Brain Imaging and Behavior 10, 296–313 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9394-4

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