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It has long been hypothesized that the human brain exhibits a high degree of plasticity for language in early life, allowing young children to acquire language successfully by using other cortical regions for linguistic functions when the normal left hemisphere language areas are damaged. However, there are few proposals about principles and constraints on developmental plasticity and functional organization. Which areas of the brain are capable of controlling language functions, and how well do they do this? If language is reorganized, what happens to other cortical functions? We have recently begun a new program of research, addressing these questions by focusing on a well-defined population of children with a single major injury at birth to the left hemisphere brain areas ordinarily subserving language or to the homologous right hemisphere areas, and by using behavioral tasks and fMRI to examine processing and neural activation for language materials (sentence comprehension, prosody) and for visual-spatial materials (spatial attention, block configuration). We believe that the results shed light on the principles and patterns underlying developmental plasticity for language and in the future may lead to techniques for driving more successful language development and recovery in children and adults with brain injuries.
This research is supported in part by NIH Grant DC014558, the Solomon James Rodan Pediatric Stroke Research Fund, the Feldstein Veron Research Fund, and the Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery at Georgetown University.
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