(Verbatim from applicant?s abstract): It is well established that word finding tasks can predict performance in several measures of expressive speech, and that deficits in word finding are considered sensitive to language deficits in several types of aphasia. Conventional measures of word finding are currently almost exclusively comprised of visual confrontation naming tasks, which have been shown to have limited accuracy and may not reflect abilities or deficits in auditory word finding. When resecting pathological tissue in the brain, one goal of the neurosurgeon is to assess and identify not only the boundaries of pathological tissue, but to identify the location of functional cortex that is dedicated to language processing in order that it be spared. The long term objective of this proposal is to combine standard (visual) and novel (auditory) word finding paradigms that will provide neurosurgeons with a more complete language localization map from which to decide resection margins that spare eloquent cortex. Specifically, this project proposes to develop an auditory object naming paradigm to examine regional distinctions between visual and auditory object naming in both the fMRI and the intraoperative cortical stimulation setting for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. A method for utilizing a frameless stereotaxy system to accurately co-register the brain across the two techniques will be developed and implemented to monitor the reliability of using fMRI as a non-invasive pre-surgical language localization technique.
| Serafini, Sandra; Clyde, Merlise; Tolson, Matt et al. (2013) Multimodality word-finding distinctions in cortical stimulation mapping. Neurosurgery 73:36-47; discussion 47 |
| Serafini, Sandra; Gururangan, Sridharan; Friedman, Allan et al. (2008) Identification of distinct and overlapping cortical areas for bilingual naming and reading using cortical stimulation. Case report. J Neurosurg Pediatr 1:247-54 |
