Zhang Wenjing, Li Chunlin, Chen Long, Xing Xiyue, Li Xiangyang, Yang Zhi, Zhang Haiyan, Chen Renji
aDepartment of oral and maxillofacial plastic and trauma surgery, Center of Cleft Lip and Palate Treatment, Beijing Stomatological Hospital bDepartment of biomedical instrument, School of Biomedical Engineering, Capital Medical University cDepartment of Bone Tumor dDepartment of Radiological, Beijing ChaoYang Integrative Medicine Emergency Medical Center, Beijing, China.
Neuroreport. 2017 Aug 16;28(12):739-744. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000000832.
This study aimed to explore brain activation in patients with cleft lip and palate (CLP) using a Chinese character subvocalization task, in which the stimuli were selected from a clinical articulation evaluation test. CLP is a congenital disability. Individuals with CLP usually have articulation disorder caused by abnormal lip and palate structure. Previous studies showed that primary somatosensory and motor areas had a significant difference in activation in patients with CLP. However, whether brain activation was restored to a normal level after palatoplasty and speech rehabilitation is not clear. Two groups, adults after palatoplasty with speech training and age-matched and sex-matched controls, participated in this study. Brain activation during Chinese character subvocalization task and behavioral data were recorded using functional MRI. Patients with CLP responded to the target significantly more slowly compared with the controls, whereas no significant difference in accuracy was found between the groups. Brain activation had similar patterns between groups. Broca's area, Wernicke's area, motor areas, somatosensory areas, and insula in both hemispheres, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the right hemisphere were activated in both groups, with no statistically significant difference. Furthermore, the two-sample t-test showed that the hippocampus in the left hemisphere was activated significantly in patients with CLP compared with the controls. The results suggested that the hippocampus might be involved in the language-related neural circuit in patients with CLP and play a role of pronunciation retrieval to help patients with CLP to complete the pronunciation effectively.
本研究旨在利用一项汉字默读任务，探索唇腭裂（CLP）患者的大脑激活情况，其中刺激材料选自一项临床发音评估测试。唇腭裂是一种先天性残疾。唇腭裂患者通常因唇腭结构异常而出现发音障碍。先前的研究表明，原发性体感区和运动区在唇腭裂患者的激活方面存在显著差异。然而，腭裂修复术和言语康复后大脑激活是否恢复到正常水平尚不清楚。两组人员参与了本研究，一组是接受了言语训练的腭裂修复术后成年人，另一组是年龄和性别匹配的对照组。使用功能磁共振成像记录汉字默读任务期间的大脑激活情况和行为数据。与对照组相比，唇腭裂患者对目标的反应明显更慢，而两组之间在准确性方面未发现显著差异。两组之间的大脑激活模式相似。两组均激活了双侧的布洛卡区、韦尼克区、运动区、体感区和脑岛，以及右侧半球的背外侧前额叶皮质和腹外侧前额叶皮质，且无统计学显著差异。此外，双样本t检验显示，与对照组相比，唇腭裂患者左半球的海马体激活明显。结果表明，海马体可能参与了唇腭裂患者与语言相关的神经回路，并发挥发音检索的作用，以帮助唇腭裂患者有效地完成发音。
