1043-3155 Pediatr Neurol Briefs pedneurbriefs Pediatr Neurol Briefs Pediatric Neurology Briefs Pediatr Neurol Briefs 2166-6482 1043-3155 2166-3155 Pediatric Neurology Briefs Publishers Chicago, IL, USA PNB-4-21-a 10.15844/pedneurbriefs-4-3-6 Learning Disabilities Neurology Pediatrics Nervous System Diseases Child Development Brain Diseases Neurosurgery Child Infant Focal Cerebral Dysfunction and Learning Disabilities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0173-7931 Millichap J. Gordon MD 1 2 * Division of Neurology, Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL Correspondence: Dr. J. Gordon Millichap, E-mail: jgmillichap@northwestern.edu 03 1990 01 08 2016 4 3 21 21 Copyright: © 1990 The Author(s) 1990 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Focal cerebral dysfunction in developmental learning disabilities

Single photon emission tomography was used to study regional cerebral activity in 24 children with developmental learning disabilities and 15 age matched controls at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Glostrup, and Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark.

 Photon Emission Tomography Hyperactivity Disorder Dysphasia

Single photon emission tomography was used to study regional cerebral activity in 24 children with developmental learning disabilities and 15 age matched controls at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Glostrup, and Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark. The distribution of regional cerebral activity was abnormal - low in striatal and posterior periventricular regions and high in occipital regions - in nine children with pure attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, low in striatal and posterior ventricular areas in eight children with ADHD plus phonologic-syntactic dysphasia, and low in the left temporofrontal regions in seven children with dysphasia without hyperactive behavior. [1]

COMMENT. The use of PET in children is restricted by the radiation dose and invasive procedure. The smaller dose of radiation associated with SPET was considered less invasive and hazardous. The MRI avoids the risk of radiation side effects and has illuminated structural cerebral defects underlying various learning disabilities, e.g. cortical heterotopias in dyslexic patients, and temporal lobe cysts in children with auditory perceptual problems. The regional cerebral blow flow abnormalities demonstrated by SPET may reveal focal cerebral dysfunction not demonstrated by MRI but correlating with expressive language dysfunction and other developmental learning disabilities.

 Lou HC Henriksen L Bruhn P Focal cerebral dysfunction in developmental learning disabilities Lancet 1990 Jan 6 335 8680 8 11 10.1016/0140-6736(90)90136-S 1967380