fMRI activation in the middle frontal gyrus as an indicator of hemispheric dominance for language in brain tumor patients: a comparison with Broca's area. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • INTRODUCTION: Functional MRI (fMRI) can assess language lateralization in brain tumor patients; however, this can be limited if the primary language area-Broca's area (BA)-is affected by the tumor. We hypothesized that the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) can be used as a clinical indicator of hemispheric dominance for language during presurgical workup. METHODS: Fifty-two right-handed subjects with solitary left-hemispheric primary brain tumors were retrospectively studied. Subjects performed a verbal fluency task during fMRI. The MFG was compared to BA for fMRI voxel activation, language laterality index (LI), and the effect of tumor grade on the LI. RESULTS: Language fMRI (verbal fluency) activated more voxels in MFG than in BA (MFG = 315, BA = 216, p < 0.001). Voxel activations in the left-hemispheric MFG and BA were positively correlated (r = 0.69, p < 0.001). Mean LI in the MFG was comparable to that in BA (MFG = 0.48, BA = 0.39, p = 0.06). LIs in MFG and BA were positively correlated (r = 0.62, p < 0.001). Subjects with high-grade tumors demonstrate lower language lateralization than those with low-grade tumors in both BA and MFG (p = 0.02, p = 0.02, respectively). CONCLUSION: MFG is comparable to BA in its ability to indicate hemispheric dominance for language using a measure of verbal fluency and may be an adjunct measure in the clinical determination of language laterality for presurgical planning.

publication date

  • February 5, 2016

Research

keywords

  • Brain Mapping
  • Brain Neoplasms
  • Broca Area
  • Dominance, Cerebral
  • Language
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Prefrontal Cortex

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC4990063

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 84957592914

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1007/s00234-016-1655-4

PubMed ID

  • 26847705

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 58

issue

  • 5