Black hole in brain

[Cartoonist2]

I have one. I was wondering if someone has a link to black holes: their location and what those locations can cause as symptoms.

Mine is at the back of the open spot in the brain center, if that makes any sense. I lost the entire knowledge of 10 programming languages in 2006, they haven't come back, and was wondering if that could be the location of those programming languages. My other lesions are outside the memory scope of the brain.

[0485c10]

It's easier for me to just write what i have read about black holes... then to try to answer your question. Hopefully ewith the information you can interpret the answer for your particular case.there are 3 kinds of black holes

1. Active Black Hole- a black spot on a t1 mri that is done without dye. with the dye it would have enhanced, but since dye wasn't used it shows as a black spot on a t1 mri its just an active lesion.

2. Persistant Black Hole - a black spot on a t1 mri with the dye. it indicates a greater tissue damage than an active black hole

3. Chronic Black Hole - a Persistent Black Hole that has lasted for least 6 months. is thought to be permant loss of brain tissue.

the brain has the ability to route around damaged area and can often maintain the functions of a damaged area with a slight delay for the re routing that the brain has to do. you read about this happening in car accident victims who recover what was never thought they would but with therapy the brain re routes around the damaged area and they do--just slower because the brain route-ing around the damage.

there has been no studies that have successfully predicted what a lesion location will do in the brain because of the re routing ability, called the plastic nature of the brain.

a lesion forms the brain is able to route around the damage, so what is expected to happen doesn't.
another lesion forms and it ends up causing all kinds of effects not expected, most likely because the brain had used that location to route around a past lesion in that new lesion location, so the re routed path is disrupted.

a black hole is a loss of brain tissue & about 40% of the brain can be lost before necessary daily functions of life are affected.

no study has ever successfully predicted lesion location to the effect the lesion will cause because of the plastic nature of the brain, but here is a website that list probable things that can be affected by location.

http://www.friendswithms.com/brain_f...ns_and_map.htm

[0485c10]

if your investigating black holes another word for you to investigate is atrophy---the ms brain atrophies at 2x the rate of the healthy brain without ms---i'm uncertain how this process works but i think they are tied---i keep an eye on both--i don't find that much explaining either. lots of guesses.

[Cartoonist2]

Thanks for both your responses. I have a chronic black hole. I have brain atrophy too.

[0485c10]

How long have you had your chronic bh? i had a persistant bh on diagnosis,it was 3 years later before i had my next mri and it was gone then.

i read that the brain will absorb the empty space of a bh and shrink, causing atrophy, brain shrinkage. i've wondered if that persistant bh healed or if it was absorbed? and my brain just shrunk?

that's why i read about terms of bh,& atrophy, brain shrinkage.

i read that the human skull is a custom fit of the brain. the soft spot in an infant's skull at first is to allow the brain to grow and then a custom fit skull forms around it.

so there shouldn't be that much room between the two.

i tried to see if there was more space in the 2nd mri where the persistent bh had disappeared, and there was. but i can't say if it was less because of atrophy, brain shrinkage or if it was just less inflammation on the 2nd mri?. there were a lot of lesions, inflamation on the 1st mri which would have caused less space between the skull & the brain just from inflamation

my persistant bh was in the upper frontal lobe.Because i watch cop shows, i know a bullet hole in the frontal lobe is the most survivable brain bullet wound so that would be very expandable brain tissue, not that i like the idea.

widening of the sculsi folds is obvious atrophy and i did have an mri report that said...'thining of the corpus collesuem' which i gooled and it meant atrophy. how did you find out about your atropy and how long have you had your chronic bh without it being absorbed? maybe they aren't absorbed....

[Cartoonist2]

I have a black hole for 4 years on the MRI's. I have brain atrophy on the first MRI done over so many years ago at least over 15 or more, but it hasn't changed since.

[Edge Of Ruin]

I have a black spot on my spinal cord

In 2006 the MRI images showed a black spot at the top of my spinal cord. I was told that things of this sort if they are on the brain the person is luckier because the brain has the capacity to re-route around the damage. This is not the case with the spinal cord. Near the black spot is a missing artery. There should be 4 there but only 3 show up on the MRI images. Evidently, the large lesion destroyed the artery. The other 3 arteries have to work harder to get the blood into the brain and my neuro said, "It will make you more tired." Oh, boy. MS people are already more tired.
I hope I am am talking about the same subject. I still have a lot to learn and sometimes misunderstand when technical terms are used. Someone said a black spot on the MRI image is an old lesion.

[barelracer]

hmmm..

i am no expert, and only carry a "probable ms" dx at the moment..but...

I to have a "hole"...first mri showed a few "small white matter lesions " and a "possible lacunar infarct" adjacent to the front deep ventricle (it was worded different, but you get the idea) the infarct(stroke) lesion(or hole) was 3mm 6 mos ago, last mri it was 6mm, but deemed "stable" anyway, and "possible" was dropped from "infarct".

I know this "hole" is brain that is damaged(gone=atrophied), but was told not to worry about...

was infarct mentioned to you at all? i would love to know what makes an infarct look different than a white matter lesion...and how they know?

sorry i couldnt help really...

[Cartoonist2]

Mine is not from an infarct.

Oh, how awful that an artery was destroyed, Edge Of Ruin!

[0485c10]

Hi Cartoonist--thanks for responding with how long you have had this black hole--which i do believe gets absorbefd by the braimn eventually from what i have read. Low and behold an alert i have set up in MS comes up with a recent article about black holes that make me think i read accurately about bh disappearing over time, in exchange for overall brain shrinkage. I wanted to pass this article to you. would you mind replying that you saw this and got the article? so i know i was able to send it to you.

btw i was working on a 2nd bachelor degree in computer science when i got ms--never had a job working with computers, on disability instead. i'm curious what computer languages you lost? just curious i learned some pretty succinct but not widely used computer languages when i was in school -just wondering if those were a couple of the ones you lost...

the article i want to pass to you is...

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/742944

where it says..
using atropy as a measure of treatment effectiveness might not work...because of the time lag
axon takes tome to degenerate, and myelin takes years to be phagocytized and completely disappear, atrophy rate might slow over several year before it was actually reduced to normal aging rate.

[Cartoonist2]

Thanks for the article!

Regarding programming languages, I lost VB and the dotNet version, my two most used programming languages at the time. I also lost Cobol, Java, C++ and some I can't remember, as I only remember I knew 10 total. They are all gone and not even a hint came back.

[0485c10]

Thanks for the article!

Regarding programming languages, I lost VB and the dotNet version, my two most used programming languages at the time. I also lost Cobol, Java, C++ and some I can't remember, as I only remember I knew 10 total. They are all gone and not even a hint came back.

Its tough, I never did get a job with computer programming but i did try to keep my skills up for a while, it is no fun without tasks to do and some of those languages at times can trash my computer & the internet is too important for me to have to try to fix my computer. do you ever try to get a book & write some basic vb programs, or java to relearn them? i did my emphasis on database, it's not sql but i download the fda aers text files & import it into access database and then process it for tysabri. its like getting a new puzzle every quarter. thanks for responding.


http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceCom.../ucm082193.htm

[Cartoonist2]

I have no need anymore to relearn them, as I can never do my previous job again, as an IT manager anyway. I also lack concentration and other memory issues, amongst all the rest. I focus now on things that offer improvement of my life quality.

In 2006, I even lost more of my long term memory. Memories seem to have come back over the past 6 months though. My languages, even my own mother tongue, had been severely damaged too. My Dutch has come back, but not as perfect as it was. French and German are back to a level where I can hold a basic conversation, but it used to be much better. Spanish and Italian returned only fragmented. My dialect and English were never damaged.

I don't mind that some items are gone. Fun part is that you don't remember what is gone anyway, lol, that's how I see it. I have PRMS and for so long, I still consider myself lucky to have survived this long and without medical disasters, after having MS for 43 years. I was finally diagnosed after 15 years of severe problems in 2006.

[GEM]

Cartoonist, did your losses happen all at once, like a stroke, or over a period of time? I find it interesting that some of your languages came back, but your computer programming languages are completely gone. Different areas of the brain?

[Cartoonist2]

I read somewhere that the language center of a brain is like a flower. The center holds what you leaned first in life, in my case Dutch dialect and English. The flower petals are the other languages you learn later on as a kid. Once being an adult, the languages you learn then are like the leafs of the stem, so further away from the center. So, indeed, the computer languages, which also counts as a language, is at a different location.

In my case, I noticed that there was an issue with my mother tongue Dutch when I had to write a full report to the sick insurance about house adaptations. It was 11 pages long and Word marked every word in red. I told hub in the evening to look at it, as I didn't see what was wrong with Word. His jaw dropped to the floor and he said that the entire text looked like some east European language: he couldn't understand a word of it. Yet, I could read it as Dutch.

I noticed that I had serious trouble speaking my official Dutch soon after that. I noticed the rest was gone too, because by then I started wondering.

I also noticed I lost memories from the past at that point. But that's a weird thing, as you don't know what you forgot till someone points memories out to you and then you realize there is no recollection, not even the slightest. So, I have no clue if it happened over a few days time or not.

I was recently diagnosed back then. They gave me Solumedrol, despite that I told them I was allergic. I had heart problems because of it, which gave me a new flare. My language problems started together with the onset of the flare. Nope, they did no MRI to check up on me. That's how things work here at most specialists in our country.