Lesions and symptoms

[squinun]

I've wondered this for a while:-

Is it possible to tell which area of the body is (or will be) affected by looking at the location of lesions?

This would be especially helpful when 'silent' lesions are detected, and knowing which part of the body they may affect.

[Sidesteps]

I am a sucker... I have had some strange visual symptoms I've been trying to map. Ask Bob. :) ;) lol ~

My mind realizes there are a lot of reasons NOT to do this. As another example, you can have a hyperintense lesion show up on a T1 GAD enhancement MRI but because it's a new lesion, it doesn't show up on other sequences.The tissue isn't damaged enough until the scar tissue forms yet you could have many symptoms. The signs/symptoms changes then those lesions can take (I think it's) months to transform the density of the brain tissue into a plaque that will show as a hyperintense T2 lesion and on other sequences.

There are certain areas that can produce certain 'neurological signs' that reflect silent lesions. That is what the neurological exam and what a few other sensitive tests are for -- The VEP comes to mind. I recently read that a VEP is more sensitive than an MRI and many times the best way to see Optic Neuritis on an MRI is by a fat suppression MRI. I just had a fat suppression MRI.

My VEP did not reflect ON but I have too many visual sx to count these days. I did make a honorable attempt to map symptoms in a recent post. (She says trying to tease herself. lol~) I think, quite honestly, it's more a way to make sense of it all, grieve and get to acceptance something is not right with me.

[kerrtelli]

My mas specialist, I am not diagnosed, said that he couldn't diagnose because I have spinal lesion sympstoms but no spinal lesions.

In addition to that he said that although I have lesions in the right spot they are not as big or as many as they normally see.

Go figure.

Every doc is different and apparently I haven't found one who agrees with me.  LOL!

[essdipity]

Go
to Health Pages, yellow icon at top right. you will see a discussion that exactly touches on your question.

ess

[COBOB]

Not really.  There are some areas of the brain that are "switch centers" that have many signals passing through them.  If you get a lesion in or near one of these switch centers, you can have all kinds of strange reactions.  The cerebellum (hindbrain,) midbrain, are some of these areas.  

Trying to match lesions to symptoms is pretty much a waste of time and will drive you nuts.  There can be lesions the size of a quarter that seem to have no physical symptoms and lesions that are microscopic and not visible on MRI that can put someone in a wheelchair.  There is also an issue of timing.  There are studies that show that there are changes in magnetic transfer that start up to two years prior to the lesion being detectable by T2 sequences on MRI.

The general advice here has been not to try and map lesions to physical symptoms.  It just drives people nuts and has nothing to do with how MS is treated.

Bob