Study on cerebral activation areas during repetition with functional MRI in normal adults

For cerebral activation of speech areas in functional MRI (f-MRI) study, the usefulness of an optical microphone, which made it possible to perform task repetition at real time during scanning, was examined. Subjects were 25 healthy adults (mean age, 27.1±5.6 years), who consisted of 15 right-handed and 10 left-handed or ambidextrous persons. Tasks comprised repetition of monosyllables, non-words, words and sentences. The repetition tasks were covertly performed during scanning of f-MRI by using an optical microphone. In both the right-handed and non-right-handed groups, activations in the left superior temporal gyrus (sensory speech area) were most frequently observed during all of the tasks. In the right-handed group, activations in the left inferior frontal (motor speech area) and superior temporal gyri were significantly more often observed than those in the right inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri. From an assessment of the laterality index (LI), left-side dominant activation was frequently seen in most of the cerebral regions including sensory and motor speech areas, although right-side and bilateral dominant activations were observed in a few cases. In both groups, activations in regions associated with sensory speech were significantly more often seen than those in regions associated with motor speech. The present predominant activations in regions involved in sensory speech indicate that the optical microphone is useful in f-MRI studies using task repetition. (author)