940 J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry: first published as 10.1136/jnnp.2004.045948 on 16 June 2005. Downloaded from PAPER The role of dominant striatum in language: a study using intraoperative electrical stimulations S Gil Robles, P Gatignol, L Capelle, M-C Mitchell, H Duffau ............................................................................................................................... J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2005;76:940–946. doi: 10.1136/jnnp.2004.045948 Background: The role of the striatum in language remains poorly understood. Intraoperative electrical stimulation during surgery for tumours involving the caudate nucleus or putamen in the dominant See end of article for authors’ affiliations hemisphere might be illuminating. ....................... Objectives: To study the role of these structures in language, with the aim of avoiding postoperative definitive aphasia. Correspondence to: Methods: 11 patients with cortico-subcortical low grade gliomas were operated on while awake, and Dr Hugues Duffau, Service de Neurochirurgie, Hoˆpital striatal functional mapping was done. Intraoperative direct electrical stimulation was used while the de la Salpeˆtrie`re, 47–83 patients carried out motor and naming tasks during the resection. Bd de l’hoˆpital, 75651 Results: In five cases of glioma involving the dominant putamen, stimulations induced anarthria, while in Paris Cedex 13, France; hugues.duffau@ six cases of glioma involving the dominant caudate, stimulations elicited perseveration. There was no psl.ap-hop-paris.fr motor effect. The striatum was systematically preserved. Postoperatively, all patients except one had transient dysphasia which resolved within three months. Received 18 May 2004 Conclusions: There appear to be two separate basal ganglia systems in language, one mediated by the In revised form 3 September 2004 putamen which might have a motor role, and one by the caudate which might have a role in cognitive Accepted 10 October 2004 control. These findings could have implications for surgical strategy in lesions involving the dominant ....................... striatum. espite improved knowledge of the functional role of the METHODS striatum in motor function,1–4 memory,5 attention,6 and Subjects Dbehaviour,7 the exact implication of this structure in Among a series of 100 patients operated on under local language remains poorly understood. Indeed, although many anaesthesia at the Salpeˆtrie`re Hospital between 1996 and lesional studies have reported language disorders follow- 2003 for a low grade glioma affecting the language regions, ing damage of the basal ganglia in the dominant hemis- we selected 11 in whom surgical resection involved the phere8–14—in particular speech apraxia and dysarthria after dominant striatum. lesion of the lentiform nucleus15–18 and perseveration after Preoperatively, all patients had a neurological examination. caudate lesions19 20—most of these injuries, especially stroke, Language was tested using a French standardised adapta- involve not only the striatum but also the surrounding areas 40 tion of the Boston diagnostic aphasia examination http://jnnp.bmj.com/ such as the capsulo-thalamic structures. Thus several investi- (BDAE).41 Hemispheric dominance was defined using a gators have attributed aphasia to damage to the commu- standardised neuropsychological questionnaire.42 11–13 15–17 nicating fibres or to damage to the dominant thalamus, The topography of the tumour was accurately analysed on 21–24 which is well known to be implicated in language. preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; T1 weighted Recent functional neuroimaging studies support a likely and spoiled gradient images obtained before and after role for the dominant striatum in language, as activations gadolinium enhancement in the three orthogonal planes, 25 26 were found during various different tasks such as speech, T2, and FLAIR weighted axial images). 27 28 29 syntactic processing, lexical processing, word memorisa- on October 1, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. tion,30 word retrieval,31 and writing.32 However, these meth- ods provide only a statistical evaluation of indirect data, with Intraoperative mapping an imperfect sensitivity and specificity for language map- The 11 patients underwent surgery under local anaesthesia so ping33—as recently demonstrated by correlation studies with that functional cortical and subcortical mapping could be electrophysiological techniques, which showed agreement carried out using direct brain stimulations. This method, between functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and including the electrical parameters and the intraoperative intraoperative stimulation in only 66% of cases.34 clinical tasks, has been described by us previously.39 Briefly, a In this study, we used the technique of intraoperative bipolar electrode with 5 mm spaced tips delivering a biphasic electrical stimulation on awake patients, previously described current (pulse frequency 60 Hz; single pulse phase duration as representing a precise and reliable method of direct 1 ms; amplitude 2 to 8 mA) (Ojemann cortical stimulator 1, mapping of the language cortical areas35–37 and subcortical Radionics Inc, Burlington, Massachusetts, USA) was applied pathways,38 39 and we applied these stimulations at the level on the brain of conscious patients. No neuronavigation of the dominant striatum during surgery for low grade system was used, because of the risk of brain shift in this type gliomas involving the caudate nucleus or putamen. Our goal of voluminous tumour. We preferred to use a real time was to study the potential implication of these structures in language, and thus—on the basis of a better understanding of their pathophysiology—to minimise the risk of permanent Abbreviations: BDAE, Boston diagnostic aphasia examination; FLAIR, postoperative deficit while optimising the quality of resection. fluid attenuated inversion recovery www.jnnp.com Dominant striatum and language 941 J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry: first published as 10.1136/jnnp.2004.045948 on 16 June 2005. Downloaded from ultrasonographic system so as not only to delineate the Clinical presentation tumour before its removal but also to identify residual The series consisted of eight men and three women, ranging tumour along the resection plane. in age from 25 to 52 years. Nine patients were right handed In a first stage, cortical mapping was carried out before any (four with a score of +100, five with a score of +90), and two resection, in order to avoid damage to eloquent areas. were left handed (280). The presenting symptoms were Sensorimotor mapping was done first, to confirm a positive partial seizures with transient language disturbances in four response—for example, the induction of movement or cases, and generalised seizures in seven. Preoperative paraesthesiae in the contralateral hemibody when the neurological testing was normal except for a moderate primary sensorimotor areas were stimulated in a patient at cognitive disorder in patient 3 and slight dysarthria in rest. The patient was then asked to count (in order from 1 to patient 5. There was no other language disorder involving 10, and so on) and to name pictures (preceded by ‘‘this is spontaneous speech, auditory comprehension, word genera- a…’’), so as to map the cortical language sites known to be tion, naming, repetition, reading, or writing, according to the inhibited by electrical stimulation using the parameters BDAE criteria. described above.36 For the naming task, we used the DO 80, which consists of 80 black and white pictures selected Preoperative MRI according to variables such as frequency, familiarity, age of All the tumours appeared as T1 weighted hypointense and acquisition, and level of education.43 The patient was never T2/FLAIR weighted hyperintense lesion, without enhance- informed when the brain was stimulated. The duration of ment after gadolinium administration. each stimulation was four seconds. At least one picture The 11 tumours were located in the dominant hemi- presentation without stimulation separated each stimulation, sphere—that is, nine on the left side, and two on the right (in and no site was stimulated twice in succession, to avoid the left handed patients). Five lesions were invading the left seizures. Each cortical site (size 565 mm, determined by the insular lobe with involvement of the extrema capsule, the spatial resolution of the probe) of the whole cortex exposed claustrum, and the external capsule up to the putamen by the bone flap was tested three times. It is nowadays (patients 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) (fig 1A). Six tumours were accepted, since the seminal publication of Ojemann et al,37 invading the frontomesial precentral structures, with invol- that three tasks are sufficient to assess whether a cortical site vement of the subcortical pathways up to the head of the is essential or non-essential for language, as determined by caudate nucleus—four left sided lesions (in patients 6, 8, 9, the generation of speech disturbances during three stimula- and 10) (fig 2A), and two right sided (in patients 7 and 11). tions, with normalisation of language as soon as the stimulation is stopped. It should be noted that this limitation Operative findings of the number of trials takes account of the time limitation The surgical procedure under local anaesthesia was well imposed by the surgical procedure because the patient is tolerated by all 11 patients. In all cases, language structures awake. The type of language disturbance was defined