What is activated may not be essential to the cogni-tive task, or may reflect other cognitive aspects of the task. As an example, most tests of verbal fluency identify SMA and cingulate gyrus, areas involved in atten-tion and motor planning but not language per se. There are few studies which have sought to validate blood flow mapping tech-niques. They show that there is good but not complete agreement between the two electrocortical stimulation and blood flow maps. However there may be as much as a 5 mm difference between the two.
Results are from a group of five normal adult volunteers.
The left side of the image is left side of the brain. Verbal fluency tasks are reliable identifiers of anterior language cortex in patients with partial epilepsy. Applications Most functional imaging has been used to lateralize and localize language function in patients. Most studies involve adults, but children as young as seven years may be reliably studied. Motor and sensory map-ping have also been used in both epilepsy and tumor surgery.