Cortical pathology in multiple sclerosis: experimental approaches to studies on the mechanisms of demyelination and remyelination

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of unknown etiology that can involve all parts of the central nervous system and is unique to humans. Therefore, analysis of human tissue is critical for generating hypotheses for testing in animal or in vitro models and for validating research findings from these experimental models. This article reviews data on demyelination and remyelination in the cerebral cortex. We show that research on cerebral cortical demyelination and remyelination in appropriately processed postmortem MS tissues provides innovative approaches for developing hypotheses for studies on the pathogenesis MS lesions including identification of targets for therapy at early stages of the disease.