Table 1.
Demographic and Clinical Information about Patients.
Figure 1.
Language areas of three different groups of brain tumor patients identified by group ICA.
Activation maps in three different groups from selected slices demonstrate the cortical structures activated by the overt picture naming task in brain tumor patients with different location. A: RH Group with right hemisphere tumor, which shows the putative language areas, including the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in the left hemisphere (indicated by arrows). B: LT Group with tumors located in the left temporal areas. Significant decreases of activations in the Wernicke’s area were seen (arrow indicated) in this group. C: LF Group with tumors in the left frontal areas, noticing compensatory language area shifted to the upper of Broca’s area in the right hemisphere (arrow). Activation maps were obtained with a threshold of z >2.0. All images are displayed in radiological convention. Time courses of independent components corresponding to the activation maps in A–C are shown under the activation maps. ICA was able to identify language activation in all three groups. Cortical structures and regions selected for comparison of activation patterns of different groups and measurement of the volumes of interest (VOIs) marked with different colors, Blue: VOI 1; Green: VOI 2; Magenta: VOI 3; Yellow: VOI 4; Purple: VOI 5; Orange: VOI 6.
Table 2.
Locations of Activated Language Areas Identified by fMRI.
Figure 2.
Tumor location associated changes in language areas.
Differences in activation patterns between groups are illustrated in the selected slices using maps obtained from subtractions of activation maps of two different groups with positive values in red and negative values in blue. A: The different map obtained from the group with left frontal tumors subtracting the group with tumors in the right hemisphere; B: The different map obtained from the group with left temporal tumors subtracting the group with tumors in the right hemisphere; C: Subtraction map from the group with left frontal tumors subtracting the group with left temporal tumors.
Figure 3.
Variation of BOLD activation as the results of tumors in different locations.
The level of language activation in three different groups of patients is demonstrated by the numbers of activated voxels in selected VOIs. Red bar indicated the number of voxels on VOIs in the group with tumors in the right hemisphere (RH Group); green bar indicated the number of voxels on VOIs in the group with tumors located in the left temporal area (LT Group); and blue bar indicated the number of voxels on VOIs of the patients with tumors in the left frontal area (LF Group). BOLD activation decreased progressively on VOI 1 and VOI 4 from RH Group, LT Group to LF Group. In contrast, activation increased progressively on VOI 3 in the right hemisphere. BOLD activation on Wernicke’s area (VOI 2) was mostly diminished in LT Group, but was increased in the superior parietal gyrus on both hemispheres (VOI 5 and VOI 6).
Figure 4.
Tumor location associated changes of language lateralization.
Left lateralization of language areas in patients with tumor located on the right hemisphere (RH Group) is indicated by predominant language activation in the left Broca’s area. Left lateralization was also preserved in patients with left temporal tumors (LT Group), however, it is less significant than that of RH group.). In contrast, right lateralization of language areas (sampled in Broca’s area) was observed in patients with eft frontal tumors (LF Group).