Tumors of the Central Nervous System in Children

Becker, Laurence E.; Jay, Venita

doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-1501-8_2

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Tumour formation within the brainstem accounts for 10-20% of all central nervous system tumours in the paediatric population [11,12,22,33,41,51,53,58]. They frequently arise from the pons, and infiltrate the midbrain, medulla, the cerebellum and/or the fourth ventricle [4,7,8,11,12,22,33,41,51,53,58]. The potential for these tumours to have an impact on language function has been recently highlighted, with authors proposing theoretical involvement of the brainstem in cognitive and language function.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language outcomes subsequent to treatment of brainstem tumour in childhood

Docking

Ward

Murdoch

2005

NRE

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While the occurrence and management of brainstem tumours in children would not traditionally indicate potential direct structural impact on classical language centres, recent theories have implicated some involvement of the brainstem in a functional language and cognitive neural loop between the cerebellum and the cerebral hemispheres. Thus, the present paper explored the impact of treatment for brainstem tumour on the general and high-level language abilities of six children treated for brainstem tumour, in addition to phonological awareness skills. Group analysis revealed that children treated for brainstem tumour demonstrated intact language and phonological awareness abilities in comparison to an age-and gender-matched control group. Individual analysis revealed only one of six children treated for brainstem tumour revealed evidence of language disturbances, with an additional child demonstrating an isolated mildly reduced score on one phonological awareness task. Language deficits identified in a child treated with a combination of both radiotherapy and chemotherapy were noted in the high-level language area of lexical generation. Findings highlighted that no overt language disturbances were evident in children treated for brainstem tumour. However, further analysis into higher-level language skills in the present study indicated that both general and high-level language abilities require long-term monitoring in this population.

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