Plasticity of the Primary Motor Cortex in Patients with Primary Brain Tumors

Figure 3

Examples of two modes of primary motor cortex plasticity. (a, b) Patient 1 had a slow growing () grade I primary brain tumor in the left temporal lobe (distant from primary motor cortex). Voxel-based analysis revealed recruitment on the ipsilesional (L) hand motor cortex but no recruitment in the contralesional (R) side (white circles). (c, d) Patient 10 had a rapidly growing () grade IV primary brain tumor in the left parietal lobe. Voxel-based analysis revealed decreased activation on the ipsilesional (L) side along with increased recruitment on the contralesional (R) side. This contralesional shift of function was accompanied by increased recruitment in the supplementary motor area (SMA, blue box). (a, c) represent images from each patient’s initial fMRI while (b, d) represent images from each patient’s second fMRI. For all images, red voxels represents activated areas during right-handed finger tapping with increasing brightness representing greater activation. White circles represent the region of interest that was analyzed for voxel counts. Blue squares represent region of interest for computing SMA activation counts.