Brain reorganisation in cerebral palsy: A high-field functional MRI study

Abstract

Early brain damage may induce alternative organisation of cortical brain functions. This may happen even if there is no damage to the cortex. We assessed a 15-year-old girl with a perinatal left-sided subcortical lesion without cortical damage by functional MR1 at 3 Tesla. The patient had congenital hemiparesis, mirrored limb movements and normal language function. Functional MRI was used to assess language using orthographic-lexical retrieval and noun-verb generation tasks, and demonstrated right-sided language dominance. Functional MRI of motor function was assessed for both hands separately, by squeezing a rubber balloon. Both hand movements induced asymmetric bilateral activation of the ..