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PET study of the localization and laterality of lingual somatosensory processing in humans

  • José V. Pardo
  • , Timothy D. Wood
  • , Patricia A. Costello
  • , Patricia J. Pardo
  • , Joel T. Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured using positron emission tomography (PET) during four tasks in right handed volunteers with eyes closed: resting, protruding the tongue, stroking the left side of the protuding tongue, and stroking the right side of the protruding tongue. The primary somatosensory tongue representation (S1) mapped to the contralateral central sulcus (Brodmann (BA) 3/4) at approximately 28 mm adore the intercommissural plane. Of note, stimulation of the left side of the tongue produced also an ipsilateral S1 response. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of rCBF at S1 across all four conditions yielded only a significant effect for tongue stimulation, with no effect of laterality; the usually large asymmetries (contralateral >> ipsilateral) in S1 did not surface. We hypothesize that this atypical activation pattern arises from the tongue's specialization for language.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)23-26
Number of pages4
JournalNeuroscience Letters
Volume234
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 26 1997

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Minnesota Obesity Center (P30 DK 50456-02). We thank our volunteers for their patience and generosity and the technical staff of the PET Imaging Service.

Keywords

  • Brain mapping
  • Language
  • Laterality
  • Positron emission tomography
  • Primary somatosensory cortex
  • Regional cerebral blood flow
  • Somatosensory processing
  • Taste
  • Tongue

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