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Functional MRI - language task

Case contributed by Alexandra Stanislavsky
Diagnosis not applicable

Presentation

Healthy subject.

Block design of a language task in a healthy subject.  Regions of statistically significant activation (p < 0.0001) during a language task are overlayed in false color over the EPI images.
There is an expected pattern of activation which includes the Broca and Wernike areas, left more than right (note reversed L and R notation) and the anterior cingulate gyrus.

Diagram

fMRI : block design paradigm

A block design fMRI paradigm requires that the subject perform a certain task in time blocks which are interleaved with time blocks of rest.   

For example, in this case the language task was to look at a letter presented on a screen and to generate as many words as possible starting with the letter: the Orthographic Lexical Retrieval (OLR) paradigm.

During rest, the person was asked to refrain from practising the task.

Case Discussion

Functional MRI of language, block design paradigm.

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