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Novel Method Measures Whole-Brain Propagation Delays in Patients with MS
A new approach described in the Journal of Neuroscience calculates functional delays across the whole brain of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), providing a more precise measure of myelinic damage that can help guide treatment.
In MS patients, damage to the myelin layer in the brain causes electrical signals to slow down, researchers explained, translating into delayed communication between brain areas and reduced abilities.
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“This illness is a diagnostic paradox,” said lead author Pierpaolo Sorrentino, MD, PhD, of the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, in Marseille, France. “There are patients whose magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans show extensive degradation of myelin but do not experience a corresponding impairment, and others that show little evident damage but still experience considerable issues. Often we are not able to tell by simply looking at the scans.”
The novel method described in the study uses neuronal avalanches, or bursts of activity that occur in cascades, that travel across the brain to gauge propagation delays in a patient.
“These spontaneous bursts of activity can be used to measure the time it takes a signal to travel across the white-matter bundles connecting any two brain areas and then compare it with healthy controls without any myelinic damage,” Dr Sorrentino said. “[W]e can, in a few minutes, estimate the delay between most pairs of brain regions and then integrate it with what the MRI scans are showing us.”
The resulting information can help guide treatment as well as refine virtual brain models of patients to further enhance personalization. Large-scale brain modeling often assumes constant velocity of signal across the edges, the research team noted, which is not accurate even in healthy brains.
“We are now able to add the time delay factor to these simulations, improving the diagnostic and predictive tools available to doctors and their patients,” Dr Sorrentino said.
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