Neuroimaging Study on the Recombination of Brain Motor and Language Function Induced by Glioma

Glioblastoma is the most common malignant tumor of the central nervous system in adults. It is highly invasive, grows rapidly and has a poor prognosis. Brain tumors, whether benign or malignant in nature, take up space in the skull and will follow the tumor. The malignant degree of growth, so that the intracranial pressure increases, thus compression or destruction of brain tissue, leading to central nervous damage, it endangers the life of the patient.

At present, neurosurgery is still the main treatment for craniocerebral tumors. Surgical resection course degree is a determinant of patient survival. Due to individual differences and pathological changes, the effect of causing the variation of the anatomical position of brain functional areas and the generation of intraoperative brain tissue displacement all make it difficult to determine correct functional areas, which is the main reason that affects the accuracy and postoperative effect of surgery.

However, routine MRI scans have difficulty in identifying changes in adjacent functional areas caused by tumors, and is also difficult to define the boundaries of invasive neoplasms. The application of functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging enables neurosurgeons not only to be accurate positioning the functional areas, but knowing the functional areas caused by the tumor before neurosurgery, so as to maximize removing the tumor and better protecting important functional areas.

After stroke, the language and motor function will undergo plasticity, causing the language and motor areas to slowly repair the damaged brain function. Contrast to stroke, low-grade glioma grows slower, which gives brain more time to adapt to the damage caused by tumor growth, it may cause more functional reorganization. Professor Hugues Duffau's research, published in the journal Brain, also shows that it is brain plasticity that can effectively explain patients with low-grade gliomas, even in language and motor areas, did not appear obvious dysfunction. Therefore, exploring the brain functional plasticity of low-grade glioma not only facilitates the maximum resection of the tumor, but also help for prediction of postoperative of rehabilitation.

Therefore, taking the patients with brain glioma as the object in this project, combining with intraoperative cortical electrical stimulation and multiple modal magnetic resonance imaging, a multi-time longitudinal study was designed to explore the imaging features of changes in motor and language plasticity in low-grade gliomas.