Abstract Objective: To explore the recovery mechanisms of Broca aphasia after cerebral stroke. Methods: Six patients of Broca aphasia from acute stroke were scanned twice in a 3T MR system with block-designed BOLD fMRI sequences, undergoing picture-naming task. Functional images were processed by using SPM5 software with general linear model(GLM) to generate activations. The distributions, dimensions and intensities of activations were compared and analyzed. Results: After aphasia, the language-associated areas in the left hemisphere were shown partially activated. In 3 cases, the activations of Broca’s area in the right hemisphere were shown. After aphasia recovery, the activation number, dimension and intensity in the left hemisphere increased. The activations of Broca’s area in the left hemisphere were shown in all the patients. The activations of Broca’s area in the right hemisphere decreased. Conclusion: Bilateral hemispheres synchronously participate in the process of language recovery. The recovery of language function depends on the functional transfer of right hemisphere at acute stage, and the functional reorganization has more important effect from the left hemisphere at chronic stage.
2012, Vol. 23 
