Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reveals Atypical Language Organization in Children Following Perinatal Left Middle Cerebral Artery Stroke[1]

Abstract

We used verb generation and story listening tasks during fMRI to study language organization in children (7, 9 and 12 years old) with perinatal left MCA infarctions. Healthy, age-matched comparison children (n = 39) showed activation in left Broca's area during the verb generation task; in contrast, stroke subjects showed activation either bilaterally or in the right hemisphere homologue during both tasks. In Wernicke's area, comparison subjects showed left lateralization (verb generation) and bilateral activation (L > R) (story listening). Stroke subjects instead showed bilateral or right lateralization (verb generation) and bilateral activation (R > L) (story listening). Language is distributed atypically in children with perinatal left hemisphere stroke.

fMRI - language - stroke - reorganization - plasticity

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1 History: An abstract of this work was presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Child Neurology Society, held on October 1 - 4, 2003, in Miami Beach, FL.