Testing the language of German cerebral palsy patients with right hemispheric language organization after early left hemispheric damage

Abstract

Language functions are generally represented in the left cerebral hemisphere. After early (prenatally acquired or perinatally acquired) left hemispheric brain damage language functions may be salvaged by reorganization into the right hemisphere. This is different from brain lesions acquired in adulthood which normally lead to aphasia. Right hemispheric reorganized language (RL) is not associated with obvious language deficits. In this pilot study we compared a group of German-speaking patients with left hemispheric brain damage and RL with a group of matched healthy controls. The novel combination of reliable language lateralization as assessed by neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and specific linguistic tasks revealed significant differences between patients with RL and healthy controls in both language comprehension and production. Our results provide evidence for the hypothesis that RL is significantly different from normal left hemispheric language. This knowledge can be used to improve counselling of parents and to develop specific therapeutic approaches.

• early left hemispheric brain damage
• fMRI
• language reorganization
• right hemispheric language

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Beitlich Foundation (Tübingen, Germany), the Tübingen Medical Faculty (fortüne programme 1704-0-0 and AKF programme 235-0-0) and by the German Research Foundation (Collaborative Research Center 833).

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.