Original Article Brain Plasticity for Sensory and Linguistic Functions: A Functional Imaging Study Using Magnetoencephalography With Children and Young Adults

In this report, the newest of the functional imaging methods, magnetoencephalography, is described, and its use in address-ing the issue of brain reorganization for basic sensory and linguistic functions is documented in a series of 10 children and young adults. These patients presented with a wide variety of conditions, ranging from tumors and focal epilepsy to read-ing disability. In all cases, clear evidence of reorganization of the brain mechanisms of either somatosensory or linguistic functions or both was obtained, demonstrating the utility of magnetoencephalography in studying, completely noninva-sively, the issue of plasticity in the developing brain. (J Child Neurol 2001;16:241-252). The earliest evidence of functional reorganization of the human brain in response to disease or injury was indirect, based on clinical observations, experimentally derived behavioral data, or, at best, crude measures of brain activ-ity. For example, in the case of linguistic functions, reor-ganization involving hemispheric dominance shift would be inferred from the observation that, often, recovering apha-sics would relapse following new lesions in the right non