Dichotic paradigms in multiple sclerosis.

A total of 20 "definite" multiple sclerosis patients were administered three commonly used dichotic speech paradigms. The tests included the Consonant-Vowel (CV) Nonsense Syllable test, the Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test, and the Staggered Spondaic Word (SSW) test. Results of the test procedures were variable, with the higher percentage of abnormalities obtained with the CV test, followed by the SSI, and finally, the SSW. These findings suggest that brain stem lesions may influence higher order auditory processing as measured by certain dichotic test procedures.