Background and Purpose: The objective was to assess language lateralization based on the volumetric analysis involving Inferior Triangular Gyrus (ITG),Inferior Opercular Gyrus (IOG), Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG), and secondary language areas like Heschl’s Gyrus (HG),  Hippocampus , Globus Pallidi (GP), Putamen and Thalamus.

Methods: Thirty six right handed children with normal brain MRI were selected for the study. Using Voxel Based Morphometry (VBM) structural volumetric differences between ITG, IOG, STG, HG, Hippocampus and thalami of right and left hemispheres were assessed by VBM, an automated technique that identifies differences in the local gray matter volume between groups using high-resolution T1-weighted MRI.

Results: There was significant increase in the volume of left GP compared to the right GP (<0.001), left ITG compared to right side (p<0.03), left Heschl`s Gyrus compared to the right side (p<0.05) while the mean grey matter volume of right put a men and right IOG was larger compared to the left with a p value of 0.04 and 0.007 respectively. No significant differences in the mean grey matter volume was seen between right and left hippocampus, thalami and STG (p =0.30, 0.795 and 0.175 respectively).

Conclusion: Our study highlights the importance of left ITG,HG and GP in language processing.

Keywords:  Voxel based Morphometry, inferior triangular gyrus, heschl`s gyrus, globus pallidum.

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Dr Ruma Madhu Sreedharan

GMC, Trivandrum