TOPOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF THE TONGUE AND ASSESSMENT OF CORTICOLINGUAL PATHWAY IN NORMALS AND STROKE PATIENTS

Abstract

Transcranial magnetic stimulation allows a painless activation of cortical motor neurons and elicits responses in a wide range of muscles, termed "motor-evoked potentials." Since its introduction in 1985, the technique has evolved as one of the most fruitful recent contributions to clinical neurophysiology.

Electrophysiological assessment of the motor routes to the lingual muscles has not been widely established so far. The occurrence of dysarthria is not infrequent in stroke patients and the pathophysiology of it has not been elucidated well.

The aims of the present study were to assess the patterns of central innervations of the tongue in normal adults and to study the functional integrity of these innervations in stroke patients with or without dysarthria using magnetic stimulator.

The present study was carried out on 45 healthy adults volunteers (34 males and 11 females) their mean age was 37.4 years (range 20-54 years) as control group. Also the study included 46 patients with acute monohemispheric stroke due to middle cerebral artery territories occlusions (26 patients with dysarthria and 20 patients without dysarthria). The mean age of the patients group was (51.49 years± 9.78) with a range varies from 25 to 60 years. They were inpatient at stroke unit - Assiut University Hospital -Egypt.