The authors examined whether specific neuropsychological abnormalities
in multiple sclerosis (MS) are associated with focal lesion areas detected
by MRI. Lesion area, regardless of distribution, correlated with
performance on the vast majority of neuropsychological procedures. No
significant difference appeared between groups with normal/mild and
moderate overall cognitive impairment on any of the MRI measures. However,
patients with severe cognitive impairment had greater lesion area,
regardless of location, and had significant atrophy of the corpus callosum
compared with the other two groups. These results suggest that severe
atrophy of the corpus callosum reflects global disease and provides a
relatively focal morphological marker of severe cognitive impairment in
MS.
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