Is Language Lateralization in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Patients Related to the Nature of the Epileptogenic Lesion?

Abstract

Summary:  Purpose: Early acquired lesions are considered to be a risk factor for atypical language lateralization in epilepsy, whereas developmental lesions are not. Hippocampal sclerosis (HS) can be understood as an early, acquired lesion, whereas developmental tumors (DT) are thought to originate in utero. We assessed whether language lateralization differs between these groups of temporal lobe epilepsy patients. Methods: We used 3‐Tesla functional MRI (fMRI) to assess 41 patients (16 DT, 25 HS) and 50 controls, performing a noun–verb‐generation task. fMRI data were processed by using SPM2. A laterality index (LI) was calculated based on the number of activated voxels in left‐ and right‐s..