Biomedical Letters

FMRI in multiple sclerosis

Shrestha Monalisha, Li Yongmei*

Department of Radiology, Chongqing Medical University First Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing, P. R. China.

Abstract

In multiple sclerosis (MS) conventional, structural and modern functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) techniques have been extensively used for studies and to understand its mechanism responsible for the accumulation of irreversible disability. Multiple sclerosis (MS), is a disease in which physical and cognitive deficit not only reflect structural damage, but also functional damage between the brain networks. Cognitive dysfunction in MS occurs during several stages of disease duration. MS with severity of cognitive manifestation is not closely related to indicate structural brain damage. Brain network and neuroplasticity may contribute to maintain the normal performances despite of the brain lesion. Most of the fMRI studies reported, changes in functional reorganization of cerebral cortex is seen in MS and hence provides to understand how brain networks and reorganization changes in MS. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging allows to investigate intrinsic, synchronized brain activity across the whole brain, and to measure the degree of functional correlation between different cortical regions. This functional reorganization of the brain might be help full for the studies of the effect of rehabilitation and pharmacological therapy of the brain plasticity especially in different stages of the disease. In this study we try to focus on what kind of brain activity have been reported during the fMRI in MS of different phenotypes. This review describes the major findings obtained in MS patients at different clinical stages using resting state fMRI and discusses how the use of fMRI techniques may improve our ability to identify novel biomarkers useful in the context of the diagnostic work-up, establishing prognosis and monitoring treatment.

Keywords: Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI), Cognitive Impairment (CI), Clinical isolate syndrome (CSI), Information processing speed (IPS).

Received December 28, 2014 Revised January 21, 2015 Accepted February 20, 2015

*Corresponding author: Prof Dr. Li Yongmei Email: lymzhang70@yahoo.com.cn