BackgroundFunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful, non-invasive technique to examine brain functions. In clinical settings it can be used to localize language and motor functions preoperatively. One of the advantages of fMRI is that it can be used to study the overall functional organization of a tumor invaded brain. To this date, it remains unclear in what way tumors lead to changes in language activation patterns. More knowledge on these tumor related pattern changes (i.e. reorganization) can further improve preoperative risk assessment and clinical decision making, and consequently improve treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the hemispheric location of a tumor on language lateralization in patients with gliomas. The hypothesis was that patients with left-hemispheric gliomas (‘LT’) show reduced language lateralization, as compared to patients with right-hemispheric gliomas (‘RT’) and healthy controls (‘HC’), respectively.
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