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Abstract:
Many brain malfunctions may impair language acquisition in
early infancy. Many of these children start to produce their first
words as late as 6 to 7 years old, but and experience a reasonable
development of their verbal capabilities by the end of adolescence.
Neural plasticity is always assumed to be a key issue for the
language circuitry reassignment supporting this verbal development.
We studied brain event related activity (ERA) associated to
language video-game playing in four different children having MRI
identified brain lesions involving either frontal or
temporal-parietal verbal areas. ERA was used to provide functional
brain imaging mappings (ERFM) associated to defined events of each
video-game. Regression analysis was used to evaluate the
correlation coefficient ri,j of the averaged activity at the
recording site i to that at the recording site j. ri,j to measure
the possibility that neurons at the site i are exchanging
information with those at the site j. Shannon's entropy was used to
measure such message exchange and to generate ERFM. ERFMs for tree
of these children were obtained in two consecutive years. ERFMs
clearly showed that all children reassigned language to the right
hemisphere as a consequence from left hemisphere damage, and that
language competence improvement is associated to an increase in
recruitment of left hemisphere neurons. Reading and writing
capabilities seemed to be more dependent on left parietal
integrity.
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