SOMATOTOPIC IDENTIFICATION OF LANGUAGE-SMA IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING VIA FMRI

TL;DRAbstract

This report describes a new finding regarding language-Supplementary Motor Area (SMA) in language processing using robust clinical protocols i.e. word generation (WG) and sentence generation (SG). This is a retrospective study on 7 patients referred for fMRI for preoperative language mapping. Subjects ranged in age from 20- 40 years (28.8 ± 7.3), mean ± SD. We quantified the dimensions of language-SMA and motor-SMA and presented their mutual location somatotopically. Compared with SMA associated with motor (hand) function, coined M-SMA, the L-SMA is located anterior to M-SMA. It is estimated from the transverse images that the whole strip extends approx.18.75 mm in the sagittal plane, which is similar to that of M-SMA. Distance between L-SMA and M-SMA ranges from 9.8 to 19.8 mm. In conjunction with the commonly observed localization and lateralization of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, the identification of L-SMA activation may help confirm the adequacy of the fMRI language mapping.

Chat with Paper

AI Agents for this Paper