Language Reorganization in Brain: A Comparative Fmri Study of Monolingual and Bilingual Pre-Surgical Patients with Brain Glial Tumors

Bilveswar RH, Faghieh E, Batuli DH, Alimohamadi M, Raminfard S, Hashem H and Ogwan DA

Published on: 2023-01-05

Abstract

Human brain tumors may seriously invade eloquent areas of brain cortex. If the re-organization of these areas does not happen, various disabilities are expected. It was shown that bilingual and monolingual individuals follow different patterns of language activation after tumor invasion, and therefore, the following disabilities may vary. The size and extent of these disabilities, from non-restructured brain areas, play a remarkable role in the pre- surgical planning for each patient.

In this study, we assessed bilingual and monolingual language re- organizations in presence of pre-sylvian Intra axial lesions infiltrated to the language eloquent areas in 3 groups of patients, known as; non-invasion, partial-invasion, and severe-invasion. We examined brain functional activity patterns during a Reverse Word Reading (RWR) task as a standard language task by fMRI study. We found different models of brain areas’ recruitment in the bilingual group compared to the appropriate monolinguals who have a “partial-invasion” or “severe-invasion”. Accordingly, in the bilingual group, significant activation of sub-cortical areas especially in the “severe-invasion” patients was revealed, with a tendency to benefit bilateral language organization and considerable activation of the cerebellum and ACC. It suggests that language re- organization in bilingual and monolingual patients is different and almost predictable, especially based on the tumor location, providing considerable insights for better estimation of patients' clinical outcomes in the future.