Language Mapping with fMRI: Current Standards and Reproducibility

Clinical use of blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a relatively new phenomenon, with only about 3 decades of collective experience. Nevertheless, task-based BOLD fMRI has been widely accepted for presurgical planning, over traditional methods, which are invasive and at times perilous. Many studies have demonstrated the ability of BOLD fMRI to make substantial clinical impact with respect to surgical planning and preoperative risk assessment, especially to localize the eloquent motor and visual areas. Reproducibility and repeatability of language fMRI are important in the assessment of its clinical usefulness. There are national efforts currently underway to standardize language fMRI. The American Society of Functional Neuroradiology (ASFNR) has recently provided guidelines on fMRI paradigm algorithms for presurgical language assessment for language lateralization and localization. In this review article, we provide a comprehensive overview of current standards of language fMRI mapping and its reproducibility.