Learning impairment is associated with recall ability in multiple sclerosis

Recent evidence suggests that persons with multiple sclerosis may experienc e deficits in verbal and visuospatial acquisition rather than recall. The p resent study was designed to determine whether this finding generalized to a broader range of neuropsychological tests of learning and memory. To cont rol for group differences in information acquisition, healthy controls (HCs ) and persons with multiple sclerosis (MS) were trained to specific learnin g criteria on both verbal (i.e., paragraph learning and paired associates) and visuospatial (i.e., facial recognition) memory tasks. Persons with MS r equired significantly more learning trials to meet criteria on the paragrap h learning and facial recognition tasks, but not the paired associates test . However, after learning comparable amounts of information, the MS and HC groups recalled statistically similar amounts of information at 30-minutes, 90-minutes, and up to I-week on the paragraph learning and paired associat e tests. This suggests that persons with MS may have deficits in acquisitio n rather than recall per se. Results are discussed in terms of possible reh abilitation strategies to improve memory functioning in persons with MS.