Dysarthria is a common symptom of facial paralysis (FP). The aim of this study was to investigate the functional alterations of the brain language network in FP patients with dysarthria using resting-state fMRI. We found that the functional connectivity between bilateral language regions was significantly decreased in these patients compared with healthy controls. The decrease of functional connectivity in the language network was positively correlated with the severity of oral paralysis in patients. To sum up, these data suggest that dysarthria caused by facial nerve paralysis may lead to a decrease of neural activity in the brain language network.
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