Skip Navigation


Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on December 15, 2005
Cerebral Cortex 2006 16(10):1431-1439; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhj080
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
16/10/1431    most recent
bhj080v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (2)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Taskin, B.
Right arrow Articles by Villringer, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Taskin, B.
Right arrow Articles by Villringer, A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Preserved Responsiveness of Secondary Somatosensory Cortex in Patients with Thalamic Stroke

Birol Taskin, Gerhard Jan Jungehulsing, Jan Ruben, Peter Brunecker, Thomas Krause, Felix Blankenburg and Arno Villringer

Neurologische Klinik und Poliklinik, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Germany

Address correspondence to Dr Birol Taskin, Neurologische Klinik und Poliklinik, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Charité Mitte, Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Schumannstrasse 20-21, Berlin 10117, Germany. Email: birol.taskin{at}charite.de.

Cortical representations may change when somatosensory input is altered. Here, we investigated the functional consequences of partial "central" deafferentation of the somatosensory cortex due to a lesion of the ventroposterior lateral nucleus (VPL) in patients at a chronic stage after solitary infarction of the thalamus. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging during electrical index finger stimulation of the affected and nonaffected side was performed in 6 patients exhibiting contralesional sensory deficits (mainly hypesthesia). Involvement of the VPL and additional nuclei was determined by high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and subsequent MRI-to-atlas coregistration. For the group, statistical parametric maps showed a reduced activation of contralateral primary somatosensory cortex (SI) in response to stimulation of the affected side. However, no significant difference in the activation of contralateral secondary somatosensory cortex (SII) compared with stimulation of the nonaffected side was detected. Correspondingly, the ratio of SII-to-SI activation for the ipsilesional hemisphere was markedly elevated as compared with the contralesional hemisphere. For preserved responsiveness of SII in thalamic stroke comparable with that of the contralesional hemisphere, possible explanations are a direct thalamocortical input to SII mediating parallel information processing, nonlinear response behavior of SII in serial processing, or reorganizational processes that evolved over time.

Key Words: fMRI • reorganization • SI • SII • thalamus • VPL


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.