The use of passive intracranial mapping is increasingly employed to complement and, in some cases, replace direct cortical stimulation as part of the epilepsy surgery workup in pediatric patients with drug-resistant epilepsy for the identification of brain regions supporting language. Most research on intracranial language mapping has employed single-domain language tasks (e.g., picture naming), which do not capture the complexity of natural language, resulting in a limited understanding of the neural network development of language in childhood (Gaudet et al., 2020). Several studies have demonstrated that both hemispheres are active in language development until early adolescence, in contrast to adults, whose language has already lateralized to their dominant hemisphere (Paquette et al., 2015). Furthermore, atypical brain development associated with pediatric neurological disorders, such as epilepsy, may impact language lateralization and localization (Besseling et al., 2010; Vlooswijk et al., 2013). Building on prior research, the aims of my study were to 1) compare high-frequency activity between a commonly used intracranial language mapping task (picture naming) and a conversational language task and 2) identify age-related changes in functional network connectivity supporting naturalistic language in pediatric patients with drug-resistant epilepsy being worked up for epilepsy surgery. I hypothesized that 1) conversational language would use a more extensive neural network compared to a single-domain language task, and 2) that there would be an association between age and lateralization of high-frequency activity associated with language tasks, such that as age increased, bi-hemispheric activity decreased, becoming more lateralized to one (dominant) hemisphere.
