Hi, I was diagnosed at the end of summer with RRMS and currently waiting to start tysabri. Now that things have settled down and I’m not panicking quite so much I’ve dug out my hospital letters and am just attempting to understand the terminology. The letter from the neuro says “2 enhancing lesions, one in her posterior fossa in the region of the left cerebella peduncle and one supratentorially in the right parietal region.” Does anyone have the slightest clue what on earth this means? I have a vague recollection of my last appointment where he mentioned they were both in the brain but my memory of that day is a bit foggy! If anyone can shed some light I’d be eternally grateful!! Thanks :-))
I’m really tired, so amn’t going to go into the level of detail that I normally do, sorry.
The brain has three main parts: the cerebrum (the large part of the brain, on the top), the cerebellum (the smaller, round part, underneath the back end of the cerebrum) and the brain stem (the bit that joins the brain with the spinal cord). The cerebrum has four main “lobes” (ie areas): frontal (at the front), occipital (at the back), temporal (in the middle, behind your ears), parietal (in the middle and above your ears).
What the report says is that you had two active lesions, i.e. places where inflammation was happening when you had the scan. One was in the left cerebellar peduncle, which is the bit that joins the left cerebellum and the brain stem and one was in the right parietal lobe of the cerebrum.
A lesion in the left cerebellar peduncle would cause left sided symptoms, but exactly what would depend on which cerebellar peduncle was affected (there are more than one and they each do different things), but the cerebellum is particularly important for “smoothing” movement and lesions there cause things like ataxia, tremor and nystagmus.
A lesion in the right parietal lobe would also probably cause left sided symptoms, but exactly what would depend on which area of the parietal lobe was affected. The parietal lobe is involved in maths, music, spatial tasks, humour, movement planning, etc.
This seems to be a really informative site: http://www.profelis.org/webpages-cn/lectures/neuroanatomy_1ns.html
Hth.
Karen x
Wow, thanks so much Karen! My main problems were vision, balance, vertigo & sensory stuff. I’ll check out that link, thanks so much x