Clinical standardized fMRI reveals altered language lateralization in patients with brain tumor.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Brain tumors affecting language-relevant areas may influence language lateralization. The purpose of this study was to systematically investigate language lateralization in brain tumor patients using clinical language fMRI, comparing the results with a group of healthy volunteers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty-seven strictly right-handed patients with left-hemispheric-space intracranial masses (mainly neoplastic) affecting either the Broca area (n = 19) or Wernicke area (n = 38) were prospectively enrolled in this study. Fourteen healthy volunteers served as a control group. Standardized clinical language fMRI, using visually triggered sentence- and word-generation paradigms, was performed on a 1.5T MR scanner. Semiautomated analyses of all functional data were conducted on an individual basis using BrainVoyager. A regional lateralization index was calculated for Broca and Wernicke areas separately versus their corresponding right-hemisphere homologs. RESULTS: In masses affecting the Broca area, a significant decrease in the lateralization index was found when performing word generation (P = .0017), whereas when applying sentence generation, the decrease did not reach statistical significance (P = .851). Masses affecting the Wernicke area induced a significant decrease of the lateralization index when performing sentence generation (P = .0007), whereas when applying word generation, the decrease was not statistically significant (P = .310). CONCLUSIONS: Clinical language fMRI was feasible for patients with brain tumors and provided relevant presurgical information by localizing essential language areas and determining language dominance. A significant effect of the brain masses on language lateralization was observed, with a shift toward the contralesional, nondominant hemisphere. This may reflect compensatory mechanisms of the brain to maintain communicative abilities.

[Digestive and predigestive functions in patients with eating disorders]. / Digestive und prädigestive Funktionen bei Patienten mit Essstörungen.

Patients with eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, AN; bulimia nervosa, BN) frequently exhibit gastrointestinal symptoms and altered gastrointestinal functions, especially delayed gastric emptying. These symptoms are regarded as secondary to the disordered eating behaviour, vomiting or laxative misuse. They often improve during successful therapy. There are, however, studies showing that in addition predigestive functions (smell, taste, cephalic phase of digestion) and the hormonal regulation of digestion may be changed in eating disorders. This underlines the possibility that, in a subpopulation of patients with AN and BN, the disturbed digestive and predigestive functions may be involved in the pathogenesis of the eating disorders. The current literature is analysed and summarised in this context.