MULTİPL SKLEROZDA ANALOJİK AKIL YÜRÜTME

Abstract

Objective: Cognitive impairment is common in multiple sclerosis (MS) and occurs at all stages of the disease with a significant negative effect on daily life activities, vocation, social relationships and quality of life. Analogical reasoning involves identifying a common relational system between two situations and then generating further inferences driven by these shared commonalities that is a fundamental aspect of human cognition people routinely use in everyday life, in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and decision making. The aim of the study is to evaluate analogical reasoning skills in individuals with MS. Material and Methods: This observational case-control study covers 30 MS patients without any cognitive complaint and 30 age-, sex- and education-matched healthy person. All participants were underwent a thorough neuropsychological evaluation with emphasis on working memory, attention, executive functions and concept formation and analogical reasoning. Results: MS patients’ performance on working memory, attention and executive functions were worse in comparison to the control group. In general no difference was observed regarding concept formation, abstraction, cognitive flexibility and analogical reasoning between MS patients and healthy controls. However MS patients with advanced age exhibited a poor performance in these tasks which also showed a moderate correlation with disease duration. Conclusion: Cognitive dysfunction can be detected even in MS patients who are relatively young and have low disability, without any cognitive complaints. Although early cognitive reserves are sufficient for performance in analogical reasoning tasks similar to that of healthy controls, they show significant deterioration with advancing age.