Pathologic and imaging correlates of cognitive deficits in multiple sclerosis: changing the paradigm of diagnosis and...

From 1868, when Charcot first described the clinical features and the pathologic correlates, up till the present day, multiple sclerosis (MS) has commonly been characterized by the symptoms caused by inflammatory plaques in the white matter of the brain and spinal cord. Early use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose MS focused on detecting these white matter lesions. By the 1990s, researchers recognized that many patients with MS have cognitive deficits that can cause severe disability, and also determined the associated pathology; these findings shed more light on both the pathogenesis and progression. Since 2004, several lines of evidence have shown that the extent of white matter plaques identified on MRI does not correlate well with cognitive deficits. High-resolution MRI and advances in immunohistochemical techniques have enabled detection of cortical demyelination early in the course, correlating with cognitive deficits. Late in the course, pathologic changes in normal-looking white and gray matter correlate more closely with progressive cognitive deficits than with visual, sensory, and motor symptoms. This finding implies the need to redefine the disease and its progression. In this review, we discuss the histopathologic studies of cortical plaques in MS and early indications about their role in disease definition and progression, describe the role of high-resolution MRI in staging and determining progression of cognitive symptoms, and discuss how advances in these areas are forcing us to rethink diagnosis and determination of progression.