Journal
NEUROPEDIATRICS
Volume 31, Issue 2, Pages 63-69Publisher
GEORG THIEME VERLAG KG
DOI: 10.1055/s-2000-7475
Keywords
brain plasticity; perinatal brain injury; somatosensory cortex; functional magnetic resonance imaging; fMRI, BOLD; functional reorganization
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Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD32665] Funding Source: Medline
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to map the hand somatosensory cortices of nine hemiparetic young adult patients with perinatal unilateral brain injury in the sensorimotor area and five normal subjects. Stimulation of the paretic hand by periodic manual squeezing produced activation in the contralateral hemisphere of three patients and in the ipsilateral hemisphere of three other patients. Paretic hand stimulation produced no activation in either hemisphere of the remaining three patients. Therefore, one-third of the patients demonstrated functional plasticity of the brain in the form of inter-hemispheric relocation of the hand somatosensory function. The volume and pattern of activation for both hands was altered for those patients that showed evidence of cortical reorganization to the opposite hemisphere. This differs from the hand motor system, which exhibited inter-hemispheric reorganization in a higher proportion of a related group of hemiparetic subjects.
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