Role of the Nondominant Hemisphere and Undamaged Area During Word Repetition in Poststroke Aphasics

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Abstract
Background and Purpose Although the resting regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in aphasic patients has been thoroughly investigated with positron emission tomography (PET) and single-photon emission CT, and PET studies in normal subjects have elucidated the functional localization of language processing, little is known about the activation pattern of language processing in aphasic patients. Methods We measured the changes in rCBF during a repetition task (hearing a single word and repeating it aloud) and the resting state using the H215O PET activation technique in 6 normal subjects (mean±SD age, 58.3±8.1 years) and 16 aphasic patients: 10 fluent aphasics (age, 60.3±12.5 years) and 6 nonfluent aphasics (age, 50.5±8.3 years). Results In normal subjects, the posteroinferofrontal area (PIF) including Broca’s area, the posterosuperotemporal area (PST) including Wernicke’s area, the rolandic areas, and a few other areas were activated with left side dominance by the repetition task. In the resting state, the...