Challenges Today and Hope for the Future for People with MS

Steve Adubato goes on-location to Kessler Foundation’s “Living to the Fullest with MS” event to talk to Dr. Nancy Chiaravalloti, Director of Neuropsychology, Neuroscience and Traumatic Brain Injury Research at Kessler Foundation & Research Professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. They discuss the challenges people living with multiple sclerosis face and the on-going innovative research in the field of cognitive rehabilitation.

6/2/17 #2041

Excerpt:

"We're speaking with Doctor Nancy Chiaravalloti of Kessler Foundation and also a research professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Doctor let me ask you this. The cognitive issues, the memory issues, as it relates to MS, talk about them. Cognitive problems are very common in people who have multiple sclerosis. What I mean about cognitive, what I mean when I used the term "cognitive problems" is your ability to think clearly, to process information quickly, and to remember things. If you think about your everyday life, we use our cognition constantly. We're always trying to remember new names, learn new faces, we're trying to follow along in conversations, drive, pay attention to different things at the same time. Those are all things that entail cognition. And they can be very difficult for someone who has multiple sclerosis. So if someone... it doesn't...? Let's just say this. Someone doesn't have MS, they're living a certain kind of life, and all of a sudden they're diagnosed. Are there certain memory cognition issues that usually happen pretty quickly? And what are they? MS is a progressive illness. So what happens is the disease progresses over time, and it gets worse and worse. So as the disease progresses, these cognitive problems tend to begin to appear, and then get worse as time goes on. So they won't get diagnosed on Tuesday and have a memory problem on Friday. What will happen is they'll get diagnosed on Tuesday and they may start to see that they're having some trouble paying attention. So as an example, when they're watching a movie, they may have trouble catching onto all of the little details, and following along in the plot. And then that may get worse as time goes on, as the disease progresses. And then they may begin to have trouble remembering things. So when they meet a colleague, and they see a new face, and attach a name to that face, they may have trouble remembering that name over time. So folks listening to you right now Doctor, might say, "Well that sounds like a form of Alzheimer's." But it's not? It's not. The pathology in the brain is different. So what... Define pathology. Pathology is the disease process that's actually happening at the level of the brain is very different. What that means is that the symptoms and the way the symptoms appear, the order in which they appear, the speed in which they appear, are different. So someone with MS, if you think about MS, MS is diagnosed very young..."