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Cognitive impairment is a common and largely undiagnosed finding in a significant number of dialysis patients. These alterations may result from concomitant cerebrovascular disease, hemodynamic instability, the uremic milieu, or changes induced by the dialysis process. In order to gain further insight into this, we recruited 12 stable chronic hemodialysis patients (without clinical neurological disease) and an age- and gender-matched cohort of 12 control individuals (without renal or neurological problems) in a prospective, single-center study. In order to disentangle the influence of dialysis itself on memory function, each dialysis patient was tested twice: once immediately before dialysis following a long weekend (t1) and again the day after this dialysis (t2). The control individuals were tested in the same time frame. Neuropsychological testing found that the control individuals performed significantly better in verbal learning, motor speed, task switching, verbal comprehension, word fluency, spatial visualization, spatial perception, and reasoning; all independent of the time point. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the whole brain in seven hemodialysis patients found significantly more bilateral activation of the hippocampus during the verbal working memory task at t2 relative to t1 compared with their seven matched control counterparts. Thus, our study found differential and task-specific activation of memory-relevant brain areas during a dialysis cycle.

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