Natural rhythmic speech activates network reorganization with frontal community enhancing communication efficiency in patients with intrinsic brain tumor

Abstract

Brain tumors provide unique insights into brain plasticity due to their slow growth compared to acute cerebrovascular diseases. Despite relying on sophisticated functional networks, patients with brain tumors exhibit minimal deficits in higher language functions and demonstrate positive post-injury plasticity; however, the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. We utilized high-density electroencephalography to investigate language network plasticity in brain tumor patients without evident language deficits. Natural rhythmic sentences and non-rhythmic sentences with contrasting speech prosodic harmony were employed to examine the impact of task integrativeness on functional network reorganization. Our study reveals that rhythmic speech perception, characterized by higher processing integrativeness, induced inhibited task engagement in the frontal lobe but evoked enhanced hubness and modularity, which supported the generation of new connections and promoted the efficiency of global connectivity. Furthermore, local invasion in the frontal lobe prompted adjacent hubs to generate enriched connections during the early processing phase, facilitating later functional reorganization. Our findings underscore the significant role of global hubs in language network plasticity and reveal the importance of highly integrated tasks for network reorganization in language rehabilitation.