Nadia CF Scantlebury1, William Gaetz2,
Elysa Widjaja, James Rutka3, Eric Bouffet4, Conrad
Rockel1, Don Mabbott1
1Program in Neuroscience and Mental
Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 2Biomagnetic
Imaging Laboratory, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA; 3Neurosurgery,
The Hospital for Sick Children; 4Haemotology/Oncology, The
Hospital for Sick Children
We
used combined magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)
tractography methods to delineate the cortico-spinal tracts (CSTs) of an 11-year
old female who presented with an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Concurrent MEG-DTI techniques revealed a
case of cerebral plasticity, whereby motor function of the patient remained
intact despite the contra-lateral displacement of her CST by the AVM. These
data support the use of the functional activation as a seed for launching
neural tracts during pre-surgical evaluation in children. Moreover, these findings demonstrate that
using a concurrent MEG-DTI approach to delineate CSTs is invaluable when
evaluating plasticity in the developing brain.
Keywords