Two patients (G01, J02) with chronic nonfluent aphasia and sentence
production deficits received syntactic mapping treatment to improve
sentence production. The patients had dramatically different outcomes in
that improved syntax production generalized to nontreatment tasks for G01,
but not for JO2. To learn how treatment influenced the neural substrates
for syntax production, both patients underwent pre- and posttreatment
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of sentence generation. G01
showed more robust activity posttreatment than pretreatment in
Broca's area; ventral temporal activity decreased slightly from pre-
to posttreatment. Comparison of J02's pretreatment and posttreatment
images revealed little change, although activity was more diffuse pre-
than posttreatment. Findings suggest that for G01, rehabilitation led to
engagement of an area (Broca's area) used minimally during the
pretreatment scan, whereas for J02, rehabilitation may have led to more
efficient use of areas already involved in sentence generation during the
pretreatment scan. fMRI findings are discussed in the context of
sentence-production outcome and generalization. (JINS, 2006,
12, 132–146.)
An fMRI study dissociating distance measures computed by Broca's area in movement processing: clause boundary vs. identity