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Villar-Rodríguez E, Davydova T, Marin-Marin L, Avila C. Atypical lateralization of visuospatial attention can be associated with better or worse performance on line bisection. Brain Struct Funct 2024:10.1007/s00429-024-02822-3. [PMID: 38907765 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-024-02822-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2024] [Accepted: 06/15/2024] [Indexed: 06/24/2024]
Abstract
The causal and statistical hypotheses diverge in determining whether the lateralization of language function in one cerebral hemisphere entails the lateralization of visuospatial function in the opposite hemisphere. Additionally, it remains unclear if the atypical segregation of these functions could influence cognitive performance. This study addresses these questions by examining the hemispheric lateralization of visuospatial attention during a line bisection judgement (landmark) task in three groups of healthy non-right-handed individuals with different language production segregations: left (typical), ambilateral (atypical), and right (atypical). Consistent with the causal hypothesis, results indicate that the groups with left and right language lateralization primarily utilize the opposite hemisphere for visuospatial attention. The ambilateral group, however, displays a pattern compatible with an independent segregation, supporting the statistical hypothesis. Behavioral analyses reveal that atypical lateralization of visuospatial attention (non-right) can lead to either better or worse performance during the landmark task, depending on the specific pattern. Bilateral organization is associated with reduced overall accuracy, whereas the left segregation results in improved performance during the most challenging trials. These findings suggest the existence of diverse pathways to lateralization, akin to either the causal or statistical hypothesis, which can result in cognitive advantages or disadvantages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Esteban Villar-Rodríguez
- Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging, Universitat Jaume I, Castelllón de La Plana, Spain.
| | - Tatiana Davydova
- Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging, Universitat Jaume I, Castelllón de La Plana, Spain
| | - Lidón Marin-Marin
- Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging, Universitat Jaume I, Castelllón de La Plana, Spain
- Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK
| | - César Avila
- Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging, Universitat Jaume I, Castelllón de La Plana, Spain
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2
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Quin-Conroy JE, Bayliss DM, Daniell SG, Badcock NA. Patterns of language and visuospatial functional lateralization and cognitive ability: a systematic review. Laterality 2024; 29:63-96. [PMID: 37771079 DOI: 10.1080/1357650x.2023.2263199] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2023] [Accepted: 09/20/2023] [Indexed: 09/30/2023]
Abstract
For most individuals, language is predominately localized to the left hemisphere of the brain and visuospatial processing to the right. This is the typical pattern of functional lateralization. Evolutionary theories of lateralization suggest that the typical pattern is most common as it delivers a cognitive advantage. In contrast, deviations from the typical pattern may lead to poorer cognitive abilities. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the evidence for an association between patterns of language and visuospatial lateralization and measures of cognitive ability. We screened 9,122 studies, retrieved from PsycINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Web of Science. The 17 studies that met our selection criteria revealed little evidence for an advantage of typical compared to atypical patterns of lateralization, although atypical lateralization patterns were related to worse language comprehension, spatial ability, and reading, but further research is needed to confirm this. We conclude with recommendations that future researchers recruit larger samples of atypical participants, and consider strength of lateraliation and bilaterality when analysing functional lateralization patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Donna M Bayliss
- School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
| | - Sabrina G Daniell
- School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
| | - Nicholas A Badcock
- School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
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3
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Dubois J, Field RM, Jawhar S, Jewison A, Koch EM, M Aghajan Z, Miller N, Perdue KL, Taylor M. Change in brain asymmetry reflects level of acute alcohol intoxication and impacts on inhibitory control. Sci Rep 2023; 13:10278. [PMID: 37355749 PMCID: PMC10290692 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-37305-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2023] [Accepted: 06/20/2023] [Indexed: 06/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Alcohol is one of the most commonly used substances and frequently abused, yet little is known about the neural underpinnings driving variability in inhibitory control performance after ingesting alcohol. This study was a single-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized design with participants (N = 48 healthy, social drinkers) completing three study visits. At each visit participants received one of three alcohol doses; namely, a placebo dose [equivalent Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) = 0.00%], a low dose of alcohol (target BAC = 0.04%), or a moderate dose of alcohol (target BAC = 0.08%). To measure inhibitory control, participants completed a Go/No-go task paradigm twice during each study visit, once immediately before dosing and once after, while their brain activity was measured with time-domain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (TD-fNIRS). BAC and subjective effects of alcohol were also assessed. We report decreased behavioral performance for the moderate dose of alcohol, but not the low or placebo doses. We observed right lateralized inhibitory prefrontal activity during go-no-go blocks, consistent with prior literature. Using standard and novel metrics of lateralization, we were able to significantly differentiate between all doses. Lastly, we demonstrate that these metrics are not only related to behavioral performance during inhibitory control, but also provide complementary information to the legal gold standard of intoxication (i.e. BAC).
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Affiliation(s)
- Julien Dubois
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | - Ryan M Field
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | - Sami Jawhar
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | - Austin Jewison
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | - Erin M Koch
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | - Zahra M Aghajan
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | - Naomi Miller
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
| | | | - Moriah Taylor
- Kernel, 5042 Wilshire Blvd, #26878, Los Angeles, CA, 90036, USA
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Papadatou-Pastou M, Sampanis P, Koumzis I, Stefanopoulou S, Sousani D, Tsigkou A, Badcock NA. Cerebral laterality of writing in right- and left- handers: A functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound study. Eur J Neurosci 2022; 56:3921-3937. [PMID: 35636946 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15723] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2021] [Revised: 02/20/2022] [Accepted: 04/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
The cerebral lateralization of written language has received very limited research attention in comparison to the wealth of studies on the cerebral lateralization of oral language. The purpose of the present study was to further our understanding of written language lateralization, by elucidating the relative contribution of language and motor functions. We compared written word generation with a task that has equivalent visuomotor demands but does not include language: the repeated drawing of symbols. We assessed cerebral laterality using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD), a non-invasive, perfusion-sensitive neuroimaging technique in 23 left- and 31 right-handed participants. Findings suggest that the linguistic aspect of written word generation recruited more left-hemispheric areas during writing, in right-handers compared to left-handers. This difference could be explained by greater variability in cerebral laterality patterns within left-handers or the possibility that the areas subserving language in left-handers are broader than in right-handers. Another explanation is that the attentional demands of the more novel symbol copying task (compared to writing) contributed more right-hemispheric activation in right-handers, but this could not be captured in left-handers due to ceiling effects. Future work could investigate such attentional demands using both simple and complex stimuli in the copying condition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marietta Papadatou-Pastou
- School of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.,Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Panagiotis Sampanis
- Psychology Department, School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University, The Curzon Building, Birmingham, United Kingdom
| | - Ioannis Koumzis
- School of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Sofia Stefanopoulou
- School of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Dionysia Sousani
- School of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Athina Tsigkou
- School of Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Nicholas A Badcock
- School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia,, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia.,Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia
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Brain Functional Connectivity Asymmetry: Left Hemisphere Is More Modular. Symmetry (Basel) 2022. [DOI: 10.3390/sym14040833] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Graph-theoretical approaches are increasingly used to study the brain and may enhance our understanding of its asymmetries. In this paper, we hypothesize that the structure of the left hemisphere is, on average, more modular. To this end, we analyzed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 90 healthy subjects. We computed functional connectivity by Pearson’s correlation coefficient, turned the matrix into an unweighted graph by keeping a certain percentage of the strongest connections, and quantified modularity separately for the subgraph formed by each hemisphere. Our results show that the left hemisphere is more modular. The result is consistent across a range of binarization thresholds, regardless of whether the two hemispheres are thresholded together or separately. This illustrates that graph-theoretical analysis can provide a robust characterization of lateralization of brain functional connectivity.
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Zekelman LR, Zhang F, Makris N, He J, Chen Y, Xue T, Liera D, Drane DL, Rathi Y, Golby AJ, O'Donnell LJ. White matter association tracts underlying language and theory of mind: An investigation of 809 brains from the Human Connectome Project. Neuroimage 2022; 246:118739. [PMID: 34856375 PMCID: PMC8862285 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118739] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2021] [Revised: 10/20/2021] [Accepted: 11/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Language and theory of mind (ToM) are the cognitive capacities that allow for the successful interpretation and expression of meaning. While functional MRI investigations are able to consistently localize language and ToM to specific cortical regions, diffusion MRI investigations point to an inconsistent and sometimes overlapping set of white matter tracts associated with these two cognitive domains. To further examine the white matter tracts that may underlie these domains, we use a two-tensor tractography method to investigate the white matter microstructure of 809 participants from the Human Connectome Project. 20 association white matter tracts (10 in each hemisphere) are uniquely identified by leveraging a neuroanatomist-curated automated white matter tract atlas. The fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), and number of streamlines (NoS) are measured for each white matter tract. Performance on neuropsychological assessments of semantic memory (NIH Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test, TPVT) and emotion perception (Penn Emotion Recognition Test, PERT) are used to measure critical subcomponents of the language and ToM networks, respectively. Regression models are constructed to examine how structural measurements of left and right white matter tracts influence performance across these two assessments. We find that semantic memory performance is influenced by the number of streamlines of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus III (SLF-III), and emotion perception performance is influenced by the number of streamlines of the right SLF-III. Additionally, we find that performance on both semantic memory & emotion perception is influenced by the FA of the left arcuate fasciculus (AF). The results point to multiple, overlapping white matter tracts that underlie the cognitive domains of language and ToM. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric dominance and concordance with prior investigations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leo R Zekelman
- Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
| | - Fan Zhang
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Nikos Makris
- Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, USA; Center for Morphometric Analysis, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Psychiatric Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Jianzhong He
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Institution of Information Processing and Automation, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
| | - Yuqian Chen
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Tengfei Xue
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | | | - Daniel L Drane
- Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Neurology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, US
| | - Yogesh Rathi
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Alexandra J Golby
- Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Lauren J O'Donnell
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
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Limb Preference in Animals: New Insights into the Evolution of Manual Laterality in Hominids. Symmetry (Basel) 2022. [DOI: 10.3390/sym14010096] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Until the 1990s, the notion of brain lateralization—the division of labor between the two hemispheres—and its more visible behavioral manifestation, handedness, remained fiercely defined as a human specific trait. Since then, many studies have evidenced lateralized functions in a wide range of species, including both vertebrates and invertebrates. In this review, we highlight the great contribution of comparative research to the understanding of human handedness’ evolutionary and developmental pathways, by distinguishing animal forelimb asymmetries for functionally different actions—i.e., potentially depending on different hemispheric specializations. Firstly, lateralization for the manipulation of inanimate objects has been associated with genetic and ontogenetic factors, with specific brain regions’ activity, and with morphological limb specializations. These could have emerged under selective pressures notably related to the animal locomotion and social styles. Secondly, lateralization for actions directed to living targets (to self or conspecifics) seems to be in relationship with the brain lateralization for emotion processing. Thirdly, findings on primates’ hand preferences for communicative gestures accounts for a link between gestural laterality and a left-hemispheric specialization for intentional communication and language. Throughout this review, we highlight the value of functional neuroimaging and developmental approaches to shed light on the mechanisms underlying human handedness.
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