hi, just wondering if you can tell from where the lesions are, what part of the body will be affected?
lynn
Hi Lynn,
If lesions appear on any nerve in your Central Nervous System (CNS): brain or spinal column it may cause symptoms as indicated in this map of the spine; http://www.makoa.org/scimap.htm
All instructions come from the brain and the spine is just a thin; bony; flexible tube that carries millions of nerves; about the size of your thumb. So therefore anything that causes damage in your CNS may cause symptoms.
Again may as there are people walking about today with lesions but with no symptoms. Obviously their brain has found another route for an instruction it sends.
George
Sort of is the answer, but usually not very specifically unless the affected area is very specialised (like the optic nerve).
There are a lot of “clinically silent” lesions in MS (lesions that don’t cause noticeable symptoms) and we don’t actually know exactly what every part of the CNS does. Plus most parts of the brain are involved in multiple tasks so damage in one area may cause problems with multiple things (which might vary between patients). Plus different people’s brains are not organised in identical ways: genetics, environmental inputs over the years (e.g. nutrition, education, etc) and experience shape our brains, e.g. taxi drivers have bigger posterior hippocampi - the bit of the brain where spatial maps are stored! (See Maguire at al, 2000, for the details.)
The spinal cord is more straightforward, but lesions can affect signals from nerves anywhere below the lesion site as well as at the site. And there are three pathways going through the cord and spinal MRI doesn’t have the resolution to be able to say which has been affected with any great certainty (unless it’s obvious) - in other words, to be 100% confident about what’s wrong with a patient, the radiologist would really have to see the patient.
The upshot of all of this is that symptoms really are more important than lesions!
Karen x
Hi, thanks for the replies. When I first had symptoms in my hands and feet my neuro had an mri done of my neck and I had an area of inflammation and activity there which she said was the cause of these symptoms. I have lesions in my left frontal lode and a new one in my right frontal lobe. I wondered what symptoms these were guilty of. Know it sounds strange but I like to know why something is or what’s causing things. Lynn
Symptoms in the hands suggests the cervical spinal cord so that’s why the neuro went straight to a neck scan.
The frontal lobes are pretty big so they are involved in all sorts of things from working memory, decision making and inhibiting inappropriate behaviour through to movement and sensation in the body.
And, no, it doesn’t sound at all strange to me to know why or what’s causing things - I’m exactly the same 
Karen x