We report a 61-year-old alcoholic man who presented with subacute physical
deterioration and severe dysarthria, MRI, suggestive of corpus callosum dem
yelination with associated white matter involvement in both cerebral hemisp
heres, indicated the diagnosis of Marchiafava-Bignami disease. During his s
tay in hospital the patient showed remarkable improvement, and was discharg
ed 22 days after admission. On MRI 2 months later, the extracallosal lesion
s had disappeared. This case raises questions about some previous ideas on
this disease, such as the prognosis of its acute forms and the significance
of the extracallosal lesions seen on neuroimaging.