Qualcomm Institute, University of California San Diego

High-resolution MEG source imaging approach to accurately localize Broca’s area in patients with brain tumor or epilepsy

  • Clinical Neurophysiology
  • February 2016

Localizing expressive language function has been challenging using the conventional magnetoencephalography (MEG) source modeling methods. The present MEG study presents a new accurate and precise approach in localizing the language areas using a high-resolution MEG source imaging method. The present study demonstrates that using Fast-VESTAL, MEG can serve as an accurate and reliable functional imaging tool for presurgical mapping of language functions in patients with brain tumors and/or epilepsies.

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Figure 3. Single-subject-based MEG localization of Broca’s area (green crossing hairs) in two subjects with large left frontal lobe tumors during object-naming task using Fast- VESTAL. The settings of the statistical significance in this figure are the same as in Fig. 2. The MEG data from these two patients with large tumors were not used in further group analyses as the linear affine transformation failed to correctly register the MRIs of these two patients to the MNI-152 atlas.