Cortical disruption and changes in brain connectomics in multiple sclerosis have been recently investigated; however, the relationship between both processes in early disease remains uncertain. We propose an integrative framework that combines diffusion-based graph theory with high-resolution quantitative T1 and T2* at 7 Tesla to investigate the topological alterations of both structural connectomics and cortical demyelination. We found that both cortical myelin loss and increase in brain connectivity were present in early MS, and that the two processes were spatially anti-correlated. This suggests that the increase in brain connectivity in early MS could represent an adaptative role against initial, mild cortical demyelination, though this would be lost with more severe cortical disease.
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