What causes white matter lesions on the brain?

White spots on a brain MRI are not always a reason for concern. There are many possible causes, including vitamin deficiencies, infections, migraines, and strokes. Other risk factors for white spots include age, genetics, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol.

What causes subcortical lesions?

Stroke, vascular injury, or impaired supply of blood to the brain is perhaps the leading cause of lesions on the brain. Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a disease where brain lesions are located in multiple sites of the brain. Those suffering from MS have significant problems with motor and sensory functions.

What diseases cause white matter lesions?

Some examples of conditions that affect white matter include:

• MS.
• Lyme disease.
• Balo concentric sclerosis.
• tumefactive demyelinating lesions.
• Marburg and Schilder variants.
• neuromyelitis optica, or Devic’s disease.
• acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.
• acute hemorrhagic leukoencephalopathy, or Hurst disease.

What are subcortical lesions?

Subcortical MRI lesions were found to be associated with arteriosclerosis, dilated perivascular spaces, and vascular ectasia (p less than 0.05). These histological changes were characteristic of “état criblé” which, like subcortical MRI lesions, is associated with age and hypertension.

Does white matter increase with age?

Age-correlated studies reveal that the changes in white matter may be much higher than those of gray matter (Miller et al., 1980). Upto 40 years of age, the white matter volume increases and is closely related to the formation of the myelin sheath (Courchesne et al., 2000; Bartzokis, 2004).

Can MS lesions be subcortical?

Pathologic studies (12, 13) have shown that small cortical and subcortical lesions are common in MS, although they may be under-represented on T2-weighted MR images (14).

What are the symptoms of subcortical dementia?

Clinically subcortical dementia usually is seen with features like slowness of mental processing, forgetfulness, impaired cognition, lack of initiative-apathy, depressive symptoms (such as anhedonia, negative thoughts, loss of self-esteem and dysphoria), loss of social skills along with extrapyramidal features like …

What does the subcortical region of the brain do?

Subcortical structures are a group of diverse neural formations deep within the brain which include the diencephalon, pituitary gland, limbic structures and the basal ganglia. They are involved in complex activities such as memory, emotion, pleasure and hormone production.

What is meant by subcortical?

Definition of subcortical : of, relating to, involving, or being a part of the brain below the cerebral cortex subcortical lesions.