Functional language shift to the right hemisphere in patients with language-eloquent brain tumors.
<h4>Objectives</h4>Language function is mainly located within the left hemisphere of the brain, especially in right-handed subjects. However, functional MRI (fMRI) has demonstrated changes of language organization in patients with left-sided perisylvian lesions to the right hemisphere. B...
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Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | article |
Lenguaje: | EN |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/f15206d5d954460fbf46603e4d9f2180 |
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Sumario: | <h4>Objectives</h4>Language function is mainly located within the left hemisphere of the brain, especially in right-handed subjects. However, functional MRI (fMRI) has demonstrated changes of language organization in patients with left-sided perisylvian lesions to the right hemisphere. Because intracerebral lesions can impair fMRI, this study was designed to investigate human language plasticity with a virtual lesion model using repetitive navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).<h4>Experimental design</h4>Fifteen patients with lesions of left-sided language-eloquent brain areas and 50 healthy and purely right-handed participants underwent bilateral rTMS language mapping via an object-naming task. All patients were proven to have left-sided language function during awake surgery. The rTMS-induced language errors were categorized into 6 different error types. The error ratio (induced errors/number of stimulations) was determined for each brain region on both hemispheres. A hemispheric dominance ratio was then defined for each region as the quotient of the error ratio (left/right) of the corresponding area of both hemispheres (ratio >1 = left dominant; ratio <1 = right dominant).<h4>Results</h4>Patients with language-eloquent lesions showed a statistically significantly lower ratio than healthy participants concerning "all errors" and "all errors without hesitations", which indicates a higher participation of the right hemisphere in language function. Yet, there was no cortical region with pronounced difference in language dominance compared to the whole hemisphere.<h4>Conclusions</h4>This is the first study that shows by means of an anatomically accurate virtual lesion model that a shift of language function to the non-dominant hemisphere can occur. |
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