scholarly journals SURG-40. SURGICAL RESECTIONS IN BROCA’S AREA DO NOT LEAD TO BROCA’S APHASIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. ii212-ii212
Author(s):  
John Andrews ◽  
Nathan Cahn ◽  
Benjamin Speidel ◽  
Valerie Lu ◽  
Mitchel Berger ◽  
...  

Abstract Brodmann’s areas 44/45 of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), are the seat of Broca’s area. The Western Aphasia Battery is a commonly used language battery that diagnoses aphasias based on fluency, comprehension, naming and repetition. Broca’s aphasia is defined as low fluency (0-4/10), retained comprehension (4-10/10), and variable deficits in repetition (0-7.9/10) and naming (0-8/10). The purpose of this study was to find anatomic areas associated with Broca’s aphasia. Patients who underwent resective brain surgery in the dominant hemisphere were evaluated with standardized language batteries pre-op, POD 2, and 1-month post-op. The resection cavities were outlined to construct 3D-volumes of interest. These were aligned using an affine transformation to MNI brain space. A voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) algorithm determined areas associated with Broca’s aphasia when incorporated into a resection. Post-op MRIs were reviewed blindly and percent involvement of pars orbitalis, triangularis and opercularis was recorded. 287 patients had pre-op and POD 2 language evaluations and 178 had 1 month post-op language evaluation. 82/287 patients had IFG involvement in resections. Only 5/82 IFG resections led to Broca’s aphasia. 11/16 patients with Broca’s aphasia at POD 2 had no involvement of IFG in resection. 35% of IFG resections were associated with non-specific dysnomia and 36% were normal. By one-month, 76% of patients had normal speech. 80% of patients with Broca’s aphasia at POD 2 improved to normal speech at 1-month, with 20% improved to non-specific dysnomia. The most highly correlated (P< 0.005) anatomic areas with Broca’s aphasia were juxta-sylvian pre- and post-central gyrus extending to supramarginal gyrus. While Broca’s area resections were rarely associated with Broca’s aphasia, juxta-sylvian pre- and post-central gyri extending to the supramarginal gyrus were statistically associated with Broca’s type aphasia when resected. These results have implications for planning resective brain surgery in these presumed eloquent brain areas.

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano F. Cappa ◽  
Andrea Moro ◽  
Daniela Perani ◽  
Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 237-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius Fridriksson ◽  
Leonardo Bonilha ◽  
Chris Rorden

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 1019-1027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Wang ◽  
Joan A. Sereno ◽  
Allard Jongman ◽  
Joy Hirsch

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was employed before and after six native English speakers completed lexical tone training as part of a program to learn Mandarin as a second language. Language-related areas including Broca's area, Wernicke's area, auditory cortex, and supplementary motor regions were active in all subjects before and after training and did not vary in average location. Across all subjects, improvements in performance were associated with an increase in the spatial extent of activation in left superior temporal gyrus (Brodmann's area 22, putative Wernicke's area), the emergence of activity in adjacent Brodmann's area 42, and the emergence of activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's area 44), a homologue of putative Broca's area. These findings demonstrate a form of enrichment plasticity in which the early cortical effects of learning a tone-based second language involve both expansion of preexisting language-related areas and recruitment of additional cortical regions specialized for functions similar to the new language functions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Maran ◽  
Ole Numssen ◽  
Gesa Hartwigsen ◽  
Angela D. Friederici ◽  
Emiliano Zaccarella

Categorical predictions have been proposed as the key mechanism supporting the fast pace of syntactic composition in human language. Accordingly, grammar-based expectations facilitate the analysis of incoming syntactic information - e.g., hearing the determiner 'the' enhances the prediction of a noun - which is then checked against a single or few other word categories. Previous functional neuroimaging studies point towards Broca's area in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) as one fundamental cortical region involved in categorical prediction during on-line language processing. Causal evidence for this hypothesis is however still missing. In this study, we combined Electroencephalography (EEG) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to test whether Broca's area is functionally relevant in predictive mechanisms for language. Specifically, we transiently perturbed Broca's area during the categorical prediction phase in two-word constructions, while simultaneously measuring the Event-Related Potential (ERP) correlates of syntactic composition. We reasoned that if Broca's area is involved in predictive mechanisms for syntax, disruptive TMS during the processing of the first word (determiner/pronoun) would mitigate the difference in ERP responses for predicted and unpredicted categories when composing basic phrases and sentences. Contrary to our hypothesis, perturbation of Broca's area at the predictive stage did not affect the ERP correlates of basic composition. The correlation strength between the electrical field induced by TMS and the magnitude of the EEG response on the scalp further confirmed this pattern. We discuss the present results in light of an alternative account of the role of Broca's area in syntactic composition, namely the bottom-up integration of words into constituents.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corianne Rogalsky ◽  
Arianna N. LaCroix ◽  
Kuan-Hua Chen ◽  
Steven W. Anderson ◽  
Hanna Damasio ◽  
...  

AbstractBroca’s area has long been implicated in sentence comprehension. Damage to this region is thought to be the central source of “agrammatic comprehension” in which performance is substantially worse (and near chance) on sentences with noncanonical word orders compared to canonical word order sentences (in English). This claim is supported by functional neuroimaging studies demonstrating greater activation in Broca’s area for noncanonical versus canonical sentences. However, functional neuroimaging studies also have frequently implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in sentence processing more broadly, and recent lesion-symptom mapping studies have implicated the ATL and mid temporal regions in agrammatic comprehension. The present study investigates these seemingly conflicting findings in 66 left hemisphere patients with chronic focal cerebral damage. Patients completed two sentence comprehension measures, sentence-picture matching and plausibility judgments. Patients with damage including Broca’s area (but excluding the temporal lobe; n=11) on average did not exhibit the expected agrammatic comprehension pattern, e.g. their performance was > 80% on noncanonical sentences in the sentence-picture matching task. Patients with ATL damage (n=18) also did not exhibit an agrammatic comprehension pattern. Across our entire patient sample, the lesions of patients with agrammatic comprehension patterns in either task had maximal overlap in posterior superior temporal and inferior parietal regions. Using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM), we find that lower performances on canonical and noncanonical sentences in each task are both associated with damage to a large left superior temporal-inferior parietal network including portions of the ATL, but not Broca’s area. Notably however, response bias in plausibility judgments was significantly associated with damage to inferior frontal cortex, including gray and white matter in Broca’s area, suggesting that the contribution of Broca’s area to sentence comprehension may be related to task-related cognitive demands.


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