Multimodal Brain Mapping in Patients with Early Brain Lesions

Abstract

The developing human brain possesses a superior potential of functional reorganization after lesions compared with the adult brain. Because of such reorganizational processes, children with early brain lesions often show abnormally located cortical representations of certain brain functions, e.g. of motor representations (Carr et al. 1993; Staudt et al. 2002a; 2004a) or of language functions (Rasmussen and Milner 1977; Staudt et al. 2002b). Nowadays, these abnormally located representations can be identified non-invasively using techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or magnetoencephalography (MEG). Thus, these techniques can not only contribute to our general understanding of the processes involved in the reorganization of the developing human brain, but can also be used clinically in the pre-surgical evaluation of children who have to undergo brain surgery, e.g. for the relief of pharmaco-refractory epilepsies originating from their lesions (Hertz-Pannier et al. 2001; Staudt et al. 2001; 2004a, b; Liégeois et al. 2006).