Clinical Utility of Resting State Functional MRI

The use of fMRI to understand how cognitive processes such as language and memory are disrupted by neurological disorders is starting to bear fruit. While much of the early translational work was concerned with focal task-related activation, it is becoming increasingly clear that network properties and connectivity amongst brain regions may be a more sensitive and appropriate biomarker of functional integrity of brain networks that support cognition. Here, we discuss resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) as an emerging technique to address questions about cognition, particularly memory and language, in the context of medial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) as well as some other disorders characterized by relatively focal damage in the medial temporal lobe (MTL).