Social memory and its neural correlates in multiple sclerosis

“Multiple sclerosis is a chronic demyelinating disorder of the central nervous system with a wide range of motor and sensory symptoms. Importantly, this disabling disease affects 2.3 million people worldwide and 6500 inhabitants in Portugal, representing the most common cause of nontraumatic disability in young adults. Besides motor and sensory symptoms, cognitive impairment has an estimated prevalence of 40-70% multiple sclerosis, impacting quality of life of patients. However, among the various forms of cognition, memory of other individuals (social memory) was never evaluated in multiple sclerosis, due to absence of a reliable way of assessment.

In this project, we propose the use of an innovative task (in collaboration with Daniela Schiller laboratory, Mount Sinai, New York) that will allow two-dimensional mapping of social navigation (as indicative of social memory) in multiple sclerosis, which will be combined with structural and functional neuroimaging techniques established at our laboratory. Our aim is to find if multiple sclerosis patients display social memory deficits and unravel the underlying neural correlates.”

Funding Agency

FCT

Project Reference

EXPL/MEC-NEU/0888/2021

Project Members

Main Project Outcomes

S. Queirós, “Right ventricular segmentation in multi-view cardiac MRI using a unified U-net model”, in E. Puyol Antón et al. (eds) Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Multi-Disease, Multi-View, and Multi-Center Right Ventricular Segmentation in Cardiac MRI Challenge. STACOM 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13131, pp. 287-295, Springer, Cham, 2022.

“Best Paper Award in the M&Ms-2 Challenge”, by M&Ms2 Challenge organizers and the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society.

Main Project Outcomes

Award for one of the best project proposals in the PCSRT program from Harvard Medical School