Clinical applications of neurolinguistics in neurosurgery

Abstract

The protection of language function is one of the major challenges of brain surgery. Over the past century, neurosurgeons have attempted to seek the optimal strategy for the preoperative and intraoperative identification of language-related brain regions. Neurosurgeons have investigated the neural mechanism of language, developed neurolinguistics theory, and provided unique evidence to further understand the neural basis of language functions by using intraoperative cortical and subcortical electrical stimulation. With the emergence of modern neuroscience techniques and dramatic advances in language models over the last 25 years, novel language mapping methods have been applied in the neurosurgical practice to help neurosurgeons protect the brain and reduce morbidity. The rapid advancements in brain--computer interface have provided the perfect platform for the combination of neurosurgery and neurolinguistics. In this review, the history of neurolinguistics models, advancements in modern technology, role of neurosurgery in language mapping, and modern language mapping methods (including noninvasive neuroimaging techniques and invasive cortical electroencephalogram) are presented.

Keywords

neurolinguistics / language mapping / dual pathway model / neurosurgery

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center (No. SHDC12018114); Shanghai Rising-Star Program (No. 19QA1401700); Shanghai Young Talents Program (No. 2017YQ014); Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (No. 2018SHZDZX01) and ZJLab; National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81701289).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Peng Wang, Zehao Zhao, Linghao Bu, Nijiati Kudulaiti, Qiao Shan, Yuyao Zhou, N. U. Farrukh Hameed, Yangming Zhu, Lei Jin, Jie Zhang, Junfeng Lu, and Jinsong Wu declare that they have no financial conflicts of interest. This manuscript is a review article and does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by a relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-020-0771-z and is accessible for authorized users.

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