Hi I have been poorly for a while on and off slurred speech pain in my eye and cognitive and memory problems I went for a mri scan the results were the brain and cervical cord shoes a few scattered areas of increased t2 signal in the white matter of both cerebal hemispheres. The are no definite lesions seen in th corpus callousness,posterior fossa or brain stem.demyelination should be considered in the differential but they do not have the typical appearances .help what does this mean I have to wait to September to see my neurologist again
Rizzo will be along shortly to explain, hopefully!
Sounds gobbledegook I know! But there`s defo summat occuring!
pollx
Hi Steven 
The jargon in your MRI report means the following:
“cervical cord”: the spinal cord in your neck
“a few scattered areas of increased t2 signal”: a few white spots showing up on the T2 scan. These are lesions, i.e. areas of damage.
“white matter”: the brain contains three main types of “matter”, i.e. “stuff”. These are white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Gray matter is the stuff that does all the encoding, storage, “thinking”. White matter is the stuff that carries signals between different parts of gray matter. CSF is fluid; it acts a bit like oil in an engine.
“cerebal hemispheres”: The biggest part of the brain is called the cerebrum. It is at the top, above the other two main parts: the cerebellum (oval shaped, lying underneath the back of the cerebrum) and the brain stem (the part that joins the cerebrum and the cerebellum to the spinal cord). The cerebrum is the bit that most people think of as the brain. Anything to do with the cerebrum is called cerebral. The cerebrum has two halves, or “hemispheres”.
“corpus callousness” should be corpus callosum I think. It is the main bit of white matter that joins the two hemispheres. Lesions are quite common there in MS.
“posterior fossa or brain stem” is basically referring to the cerebellum and the brain stem (described above).
“demyelination” is the process in which the myelin coating of nerves is damaged. Myelin is a bit like the protective, plastic coating on electric wires: damage it and the wire may not work properly. The same goes for demyelination. Demyelination is one of the main processes in MS, however it also occurs in other conditions, including vitamin B12 deficiency, one off conditions like ADEM and genetic conditions.
“differential”: the possible diagnoses the neuro is considering.
So…
You have a few, scattered lesions in both halves of your cerebrum, but there are no clear lesions in the cerebellum or brainstem. The lesions could be due to demyelination, but their shape and location are not typical of demyelination. This shouldn’t rule it out though and the radiologist is suggesting that the neuro consider demyelination as a cause.
One thing: the word “definite” leaves room for there to be something there if another, higher resolution scan was done of the cerebellum/brainstem. This may be something that becomes relevant, depending on how your consultation goes. If, for example, the neuro is dismissive of the findings, you could push to find out for sure if there is something going on in that area. It may not be necessary though.
Hth!
Anything that’s unclear here may be better explained in my sticky post about the brain & MRI, but if not, and you want to know more, please just ask.
Karen x
Thanks you very much rizzo