Highlighting Text Within A Specific Cell

I'm currently working on a project which is essentially a clickable
world map. I have successfully mapped the image and using a
OnMouseOver = "Continent()" OnMouseOut = "World()" command in each
mapping line ie. <area shape="poly" onmouseover="NA()"
onmouseout="World()" coords="(lotsonumbers)".

In my continent functions I change the image using something like:
function Africa()
{document.images[35].src="/_View/images/maps/worldmaps/world.africa.jpg";
return true;}

This gives me the "highlighting" effect I was looking for when people
mouse over the continent.

However! my problem now is that I need to find a way to essentially
link that with a cell within the same table as the mapped image. There
is a list of the continents in the column next to the map (the map has
all the rows merged in that column). I need it so that if I run the
mouse over the continent or that cell both of them highlight at the
same time. I see the best way of doing this as having both call the
World or Continent function. However I have been unable to find any
way of setting a specific cell's background or text from within a
function.