Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often suffer from a number of enduring cognitive impairments such as in attention, memory, speed of processing information and dual-task performance.

The aim of this study was to assess the patterns of regional brain activation in response to the Tower of London (ToL) task in a group of patients suffering from chronic TBI using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

fMRI was performed during performance of the ToL planning task in 10 patients suffering from severe TBI and in 10 age- and sex-matched controls using a 3 T magnetic resonance scanner.

Performance data showed no difference in response accuracy between the TBI group and the healthy control group. Statistical parametric brain maps showed that the TBI group activates larger and additional areas of the cerebral cortex than the healthy control group both for tasks and for a subtraction contrast between the tasks.

The results of this study are interpreted as a cortical reorganization inside the executive system of vigilance and working memory in patients with TBI. Both parietal and frontal areas are recruited to compensate for damaged brain tissue.

To develop and test a novel fMRI compatible comprehensive and expressive language task that reliably and predictably activates both Wernicke's and Broca's cortical brain regions, respectively, and has utility for the determination of hemispheric language dominance.

Ten healthy men (seven) and women (three) were administered a task based on the television game Jeopardy that was adapted for fMRI presentation. The task was programmed using E-PRIME software and designed to run as an event-related experiment. The study was conducted on 3 T MRI Phillips Intera scanner, and data was anlysed using Brain Voyager QX. All subjects provided written informed consent.

The Jeopardy task produced robust left hemisphere activation in regions corresponding to Wernicke's and Broca's areas.

This novel fMRI compatible task (Jeopardy) reliably maps both Broca's and Wernicke's areas with robust hemispheric lateralization. It is potentially useful in language localization studies as it offers advantages over conventional procedures and other fMRI tasks by virtue of being non-invasive and mapping both language areas in one experiment.