The effect of different brain lesions on the reorganization of language functions within the dominant hemisphere assessed with task-based BOLD-fMRI

Background and purposeLanguage reorganization has been described in brain lesions with respect to their location and timing, but little is known with respect to their etiology. We used fMRI to investigate the effects of different types of left hemisphere lesions (GL = gliomas, TLE = temporal lobe epilepsy and CA = cavernous angioma) on the topographic intra-hemispheric language plasticity, also considering their location.MethodsForty-seven right-handed patients with 3 different left hemisphere lesions (16 GL, 15 TLE and 16 CA) and 17 healthy controls underwent BOLD fMRI with a verb-generation task. Euclidean distance was used to measure activation peak shifts among groups with respect to reference Tailarach coordinates of Inferior Frontal Gyrus, Superior Temporal Sulcus and Temporo-Parietal Junction. Mixed-model ANOVAs were used to test for differences in activation peak shifts.ResultsSignificant activation peak shifts were found in GL patients with respect both to HC and other groups (TLA and CA). In addition, in the same group of patients a significant effect of tumor location (anterior or posterior) was detected.ConclusionsWe demonstrated that intra-hemispheric language plasticity is influenced by the type of lesion affecting the left hemisphere and that fMRI is especially valuable in the preoperative assessment of such reorganization in glioma patients.