Discrimination of Exner's area and the frontal eye field in humans--functional magnetic resonance imaging during language and saccade tasks.
In the left frontal lobe, Exner's area (EXA), which is responsible for writing and reading, is located close to the frontal eye field (FEF), which is responsible for eye movements. To discriminate EXA from FEF anatomically and functionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted in 12 healthy volunteers. The saccadic eye movement experiment activated a region defined as the FEF, whereas three language experiments that included translation between grapheme and phoneme activated another region defined as EXA. EXA was found to be located only 1.5 cm apart from the FEF in the Talairach brain template. By conducting the saccade and language experiments in the same individuals, this study was able to successfully separate EXA from FEF.
Matsuo
Kayako
K
Medical Vision Laboratory, Life Electronics Research Center, AIST, 1-8-31, Midorigaoka, Ikeda, Osaka, Japan. kayako.matsuo@aist.go.jp
Kato
Chikako
C
Sumiyoshi
Chika
C
Toma
Keiichiro
K
Duy Thuy
Dinh Ha
DH
Moriya
Tetsuo
T
Fukuyama
Hidenao
H
Nakai
Toshiharu
T
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*