title: Language brain dominance in patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy: a comparative study between functional magnetic resonance imaging and dichotic listening test.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To identify brain dominance for language functions with DLT and correlate these results with those obtained from fMRI in patients suffering from intractable temporal lobe epilepsy.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study reports on 13 patients who underwent pre-surgical epileptic evaluation between April and October 2004 at the Epilepsy Surgery Program, Hospital Sao Lucas, PUCRS. In DLT, dominance was assessed through a consonant-vowel task, whereas in fMRI patients performed a verb generation task.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our results identified a correlation between the fMRI lateralization index and the DLT ear predominance index and reply difference index (r=0.6, p=0.02; Pearson Correlation Coefficient), showing positive correlation between results obtained from fMRI and DLT.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  DLT was found to significantly correlate with fMRI. These findings indicate that DLT (a non-invasive procedure) could be a useful tool to evaluate language brain dominance in pre-surgical epileptic patients as it is cheaper to perform than fMRI.
authors.affiliation: Programa de Cirurgia de Epilepsia, Serviço de Neurologia, Hospital São Lucas, Pucrs, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. denisefontoura@sapo.pt
authors.forename: Denise Ren da
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Fontoura
authors.forename: Daniel de Moraes
authors.initials: Dde M
authors.lastname: Branco
authors.forename: Mauricio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Anés
authors.forename: Jaderson Costa da
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.forename: Mirna Wetters
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Portuguez
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged