Regionalized sensorimotor plasticity after hemispherectomy fMRI evaluation

This study demonstrates the transfer of both motor and sensory functions fr om one hemisphere to the other in children who had an entire cortical hemis phere surgically removed. The areas of the cortex responsible for these new functions in the remaining hemisphere are associative motor and sensory ar eas and do not include the typical primary motor and somatosensory regions, thus suggesting the regionalization of brain plasticity. This regionalizat ion can be evaluated with functional magnetic resonance imaging, supporting this technique as an effective tool in the study of brain plasticity. (C) 1998 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.