Article

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to map the hand somatasensiry 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 sqeezing produced activation in the contralateral 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 volum 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.

Langue : ANGLAIS

Tiré à part : OUI

Identifiant basis : 2000212929