Left-Handers Are Less Lateralized Than Right-Handers for Both Left and Right Hemispheric Functions.

Many neuroscientific techniques have revealed that more left- than right-handers will have unusual cerebral asymmetries for language. After the original emphasis on frequency in the aphasia and epilepsy literatures, most neuropsychology, and neuroimaging efforts rely on estimates of central tendency to compare these two handedness groups on any given measure of asymmetry. The inevitable reduction in mean lateralization in the left-handed group is often postulated as being due to reversed asymmetry in a small subset of them, but it could also be due to a reduced asymmetry in many of the left-handers. These two possibilities have hugely different theoretical interpretations. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging localizer paradigms, we matched left- and right-handers for hemispheric dominance across four functions (verbal fluency, face perception, body perception, and scene perception). We then compared the degree of dominance between the two handedness groups for each of these four measures, conducting t-tests on the mean laterality indices. The results demonstrate that left-handers with typical cerebral asymmetries are less lateralized for language, faces, and bodies than their right-handed counterparts. These results are difficult to reconcile with current theories of language asymmetry or of handedness.

The depth and breadth of multiple perceptual asymmetries in right handers and non-right handers.

Several non-verbal perceptual and attentional processes have been linked with specialization of the right cerebral hemisphere. Given that most people have a left hemispheric specialization for language, it is tempting to assume that functions of these two classes of dominance are related. Unfortunately, such models of complementarity are notoriously hard to test. Here we suggest a method which compares frequency of a particular perceptual asymmetry with known frequencies of left hemispheric language dominance in right-handed and non-right handed groups. We illustrate this idea using the greyscales and colourscales tasks, chimeric faces, emotional dichotic listening, and a consonant-vowel dichotic listening task. Results show a substantial "breadth" of leftward bias on the right hemispheric tasks and rightward bias on verbal dichotic listening. Right handers and non-right handers did not differ in terms of proportions of people who were left biased for greyscales/colourscales. Support for reduced typical biases in non-right handers was found for chimeric faces and for CV dichotic listening. Results are discussed in terms of complementary theories of cerebral asymmetries, and how this type of method could be used to create a taxonomy of lateralized functions, each categorized as related to speech and language dominance, or not.

Do left hand reaction time advantages depend on localising unpredictable targets?

Asymmetries in hand movements have routinely been attributed to properties of the two cerebral hemispheres. In right-handed participants, the non-dominant left hand tends to have shorter reaction times, with the dominant right hand achieving shorter movement durations as well as higher peak velocities. The root cause of the surprising left hand RT effect has been debated, largely in the context of right hemisphere specialisation in attention, visuospatial abilities, or "premotor" processes. Mieschke et al. (Brain Cognit 45:1, 2001) and Barthélémy and Boulinguez ( Behav Brain Res 133:1, 2002) both tried to dissociate "premotor" processes explaining the left hand RT advantage, using reaching paradigms where at least one condition required target detection, but no visually guided aiming movement. Unfortunately, the studies obtained conflicting results and conclusions. In the present study, we attempted to re-examine this kind of paradigm with methodological improvements, such as using a task with higher visuospatial demands. Our results demonstrate that whilst RTs are longer as movement complexity increases across three conditions, the left hand RT advantage is present across all conditions-and no significant interaction between hand and condition was found. No significant hand differences were found in peak velocity or duration. These results suggest that the left hand RT advantage cannot be due to movement planning advantages of the right hemisphere, and instead should be attributed to sustained attention/vigilance lateralisation to the right cerebral hemisphere.

The validity and reliability of quantifying hemispheric specialisation using fMRI: Evidence from left and right handers on three different cerebral asymmetries.

Neuroimaging has tremendous potential for quantifying hemispheric specializations. However, the possibilities remain under-utilized, in part, given some of the complexities in quantifying any differences in a reliable, transparent fashion. A second issue with hemispheric asymmetries is that they are extremely one-sided in most people. This skew limits the generalisability of any findings to those participants with rarer forms of cerebral asymmetry. Here, we demonstrate usefulness of an approach developed by Wilke and Lidzba, (J Neurosci Meth, 163, 2007), which allows for threshold-independent estimates of cerebral asymmetry to be calculated in individual participants. We compared these estimates from two separate runs for three different cerebral asymmetries in the same participants. We circumvented the skewed nature of this type of data in two ways; first, we scanned a large number of non-right handed participants, and second, we included asymmetries that favour the right hemisphere in right handers, which we had reason to believe were less skewed than those related to speech and language. Verbal fluency and two visuoperceptual asymmetries were localized in a sample of 33 right handed and 60 non-right handed participants. Laterality indices (LIs), which quantify the direction and strength of an asymmetry, were calculated for BOLD activity relating to language, face perception, and body perception in each run separately. Run 1 - run 2 correlations were all statistically significant and surprisingly sizeable (r = 0.89 to r = 0.62), considering the relatively short amount of time on task within our particular localizers. This noteworthy success validates a number of useful ways that functional neuroimaging can be used to advance understanding of cerebral asymmetries.

Quantifying cerebral asymmetries for language in dextrals and adextrals with random-effects meta analysis.

Speech and language-related functions tend to depend on the left hemisphere more than the right in most right-handed (dextral) participants. This relationship is less clear in non-right handed (adextral) people, resulting in surprisingly polarized opinion on whether or not they are as lateralized as right handers. The present analysis investigates this issue by largely ignoring methodological differences between the different neuroscientific approaches to language lateralization, as well as discrepancies in how dextral and adextral participants were recruited or defined. Here we evaluate the tendency for dextrals to be more left hemisphere dominant than adextrals, using random effects meta analyses. In spite of several limitations, including sample size (in the adextrals in particular), missing details on proportions of groups who show directional effects in many experiments, and so on, the different paradigms all point to proportionally increased left hemispheric dominance in the dextrals. These results are analyzed in light of the theoretical importance of these subtle differences for understanding the cognitive neuroscience of language, as well as the unusual asymmetry in most adextrals.