School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, St. Luke's Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Brain Behav. 2022 Jun;12(6):e2609. doi: 10.1002/brb3.2609. Epub 2022 May 19.
Mapping the language system has been crucial in presurgical evaluation especially when the area to be resected is near relevant eloquent cortex. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) proved to be a noninvasive alternative of Wada test that can account not only for language lateralization but also for localization when appropriate tasks and MRI sequences are being used. The tasks utilized during the fMRI acquisition are playing a crucial role as to which areas will be activated. Recent studies demonstrated that key language regions exist outside the classical model of "Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind," but sensitive tasks must take place in order to be revealed. On top of that, the tasks should be in mother tongue for appropriate language mapping to be possible.
For that reason, in this study, we adopted an English protocol that can reveal six language critical regions even in clinical setups and we translated it into Greek to prove its efficacy in Greek population. Twenty healthy right-handed volunteers were recruited and performed the fMRI acquisition in a standardized manner.
Results demonstrated that all six language critical regions were activated in all subjects as well as the group mean map. Furthermore, activations were found in the thalamus, the caudate, and the contralateral cerebellum.
In this study, we standardized an fMRI protocol in Greek and proved that it can reliably activate six language critical regions. We have validated its efficacy for presurgical language mapping in Greek patients capable to be adopted in clinical setup.
绘制语言系统图对于术前评估至关重要，特别是当要切除的区域靠近相关的语言中枢时。功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 已被证明是 Wada 测试的一种非侵入性替代方法，不仅可以用于语言侧化，而且在适当的任务和 MRI 序列被使用时，还可以用于定位。在 fMRI 采集过程中使用的任务对于哪些区域将被激活起着至关重要的作用。最近的研究表明，关键语言区域存在于经典的“Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind”模型之外，但必须进行敏感的任务才能揭示这些区域。除此之外，任务应该使用母语，以便能够进行适当的语言映射。
为此，在这项研究中，我们采用了一种英语协议，即使在临床环境中也可以揭示六个语言关键区域，我们将其翻译成希腊语，以证明其在希腊人群中的有效性。我们招募了 20 名健康的右利手志愿者，并以标准化的方式进行 fMRI 采集。
结果表明，所有六个语言关键区域在所有受试者以及组平均图中均被激活。此外，在丘脑、尾状核和对侧小脑也发现了激活。
在这项研究中，我们对希腊语的 fMRI 协议进行了标准化，并证明它可以可靠地激活六个语言关键区域。我们已经验证了它在希腊患者术前语言映射中的有效性，该协议能够被应用于临床环境。
