Preoperative language mapping with functional magnetic resonance imaging

One of the major priorities during neurosurgery is to spare functionally critical regions, including those critical for language, so that the patient's ability to speak and understand speech is not compromised after the surgery. The gold standard for determining the individual location of functional critical language regions is intraoperative language mapping. But it can be complemented with preoperative language mapping using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Already before the surgery, fMRI can provide a preliminary individual map of functionally critical language regions, informing the neurosurgical team and allowing to decide on the necessity and strategy of intraoperative mapping.

Together with the National Medical and Surgical Center named after N.I. Pirogov, we have developed a Russian-language protocol for preoperative language mapping using fMRI. The protocol uses a sentence completion task, which simultaneously engages language production and comprehension at the sentence level and thus provides the most comprehensive map of functionally critical language regions. The protocol was successfully validated in a control group of neurologically healthy participants and is currently tested in the clinical group of presurgical patients.

Linguistic stimuli for the Russian fMRI protocol (XLSX, 33 Кб) 

Publications
Elin K., Malyutina S., Bronov O., Stupina E., Marinets A., Zhuravleva A., Dragoy O. A New Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Localizer for Preoperative Language Mapping Using a Sentence Completion Task: Validity, Choice of Baseline Condition, and Test–Retest Reliability // Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2022. Vol. 16. Article 791577. [Full text]