[Meta-Cognitive Ability and Brain Damage in Autoimmune Encephalitis: A Case Report].

Autoimmune encephalitis is an important contributor to rapidly progressive cognitive and behavioral decline. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the effects of cognitive rehabilitation in a patient with autoimmune encephalitis. We also wanted to evaluate the effectiveness of rehabilitative treatment by monitoring the cognitive and metacognitive outcomes over a time interval. We reported a case of 22 year-old female patient with autoimmune encephalitis, cognitive behavioral impairments, and severe reduction in metarepresentational capacity. We performed an assessment of personality, neuropsychological, and meta-cognitive functions at the beginning of the rehabilitative training. The last evaluation was performed six months after the discharge from the rehabilitation unit. We applied a combination of remediation, psycho-educational treatment, and psychotherapy to improve the knowledge and the empathy of the patient, to promote the selfcontrol strategies, and to prompt better behavioral management. Our findings revealed an improvement in the performance of the individual tests after rehabilitative training.