Meinzer, M;
Flaisch, T;
Obleser, J;
Assadollahi, R;
Djundja, D;
Barthel, G;
Rockstroh, B;
(2006)
Brain regions essential for improved lexical access in an aged aphasic patient: A case report.
BMC Neurology
, 6
, Article 28. 10.1186/1471-2377-6-28.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: The relationship between functional recovery after brain injury and concomitant neuroplastic changes is emphasized in recent research. In the present study we aimed to delineate brain regions essential for language performance in aphasia using functional magnetic resonance imaging and acquisition in a temporal sparse sampling procedure, which allows monitoring of overt verbal responses during scanning. Case Presentation: An 80-year old patient with chronic aphasia (2 years post-onset) was investigated before and after intensive language training using an overt picture naming task. Differential brain activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus for correct word retrieval and errors was found. Improved language performance following therapy was mirrored by increased fronto-thalamic activation while stability in more general measures of attention/concentration and working memory was assured. Three healthy age-matched control subjects did not show behavioral changes or increased activation when tested repeatedly within the same 2-week time interval. CONCLUSIONS: The results bear significance in that the changes in brain activation reported can unequivocally be attributed to the short-term training program and a language domain-specific plasticity process. Moreover, it further challenges the claim of a limited recovery potential in chronic aphasia, even at very old age. Delineation of brain regions essential for performance on a single case basis might have major implications for treatment using transcranial magnetic stimulation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Brain regions essential for improved lexical access in an aged aphasic patient: A case report. |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2377-6-28 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2377-6-28 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2006 Meinzer et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/183246 |
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