Expressive and receptive language areas determined by a non-invasive reliable method using functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography

OBJECTIVE: It is known that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are sensitive to the frontal and temporal language function, respectively. Therefore, we established combined use of fMRI and MEG to make reliable identification of the global language dominance in pathological brain conditions. METHODS: We investigated 117 patients with brain lesions whose language dominance was successfully confirmed by the Wada test. All patients were asked to generate verbs related to acoustically presented nouns (verb generation) for fMRI and to read three-letter words for fMRI and MEG. RESULTS: fMRI typically showed prominent activations in the inferior and middle frontal gyri, whereas calculated dipoles on MEG typically clustered in the superior temporal region and the fusiform gyrus of the dominant hemisphere. A total of 87 patients were further analyzed using useful data from both the combined method and the Wada test. Remarkably, we observed a 100% match of the combined method results with the results of the Wada test, including two patients who showed expressive and receptive language areas dissociated into bilateral hemispheres. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that this non-invasive and repeatable method is not only highly reliable in determining language dominance, but can also locate the expressive and receptive language areas separately. The method may be a potent alternative to invasive procedures of the Wada test and useful in treating patients with brain lesions.