Assessment of Functional Disorders of Magno, Parvo and Konio-Cellular Pathways in MS Patients by using fMRI

During vision process, the information produced by rod and cone photoreceptors is compressed in retina and then is transmitted by three separated pathways of ganglion cells, Magno, Parvo and Konio, to the upper level processing centers. There are electrophysiological and psychophysical evidences that these three pathways show characteristic patterns of malfunction in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Although fMRI can provide accurate localization of the neural activities in these pathways, there is no fMRI study on malfunctions of these pathwyas in MS yet. So by employing the differences in structure and function of these cells, we generated three different visual stimuli with different spatial and temporal frequencies to stimulate each pathway separately. These stimuli were shown to the subject inside MRI scanner by a calibrated projector located outside of scanner room. The fMRI data were acquired from two groups of normal and MS subjects (each including 5 subjects) by using a standard protocol. Finally, the activation results in visual lobe and LGN were analyzed in within-group and between-group levels. Results showed patterns of malfunctions in visual cortex and LGN in MS group. Also, among Magno, Parvo, and Konio cellular pathways in LGN, just the activation of Magno cellular pathway showed significant malfunction in MS group.