Cerebral lateralization of language in normal left-handed people studied by functional MRI

Pujol, Jesús; Deus, Joan; Losilla, Josep-María; Capdevila, Antoni

doi:10.1212/wnl.52.5.1038

Cited by 614 publications

(408 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…There is also a weak correlation between handedness and the lateralized representation of language in the human brain. Studies based on the Wada test (Rasmussen & Milner 1977), electroconvulsive therapy (Warrington & Pratt 1973) and brain imaging (Pujol et al 1999;Knecht et al 2000) are reasonably consistent in showing that over 90 per cent of right-handers are left-cerebrally dominant for language, compared with approximately 70 per cent of left-handers. These estimates can be matched by McManus's model with p(D)Z0.8, on the assumption that handedness and cerebral dominance for language are subject to the same biases in the three genotypes, but that the biases are applied independently (table 2).…”

Section: Genetic Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 92%

The evolution and genetics of cerebral asymmetry

Corballis

2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

235

167

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Handedness and cerebral asymmetry are commonly assumed to be uniquely human, and even defining characteristics of our species. This is increasingly refuted by the evidence of behavioural asymmetries in non-human species. Although complex manual skill and language are indeed unique to our species and are represented asymmetrically in the brain, some non-human asymmetries appear to be precursors, and others are shared between humans and non-humans. In all behavioural and cerebral asymmetries so far investigated, a minority of individuals reverse or negate the dominant asymmetry, suggesting that such asymmetries are best understood in the context of the overriding bilateral symmetry of the brain and body, and a trade-off between the relative advantages and disadvantages of symmetry and asymmetry. Genetic models of handedness, for example, typically postulate a gene with two alleles, one disposing towards right-handedness and the other imposing no directional influence. There is as yet no convincing evidence as to the location of this putative gene, suggesting that several genes may be involved, or that the gene may be monomorphic with variations due to environmental or epigenetic influences. Nevertheless, it is suggested that, in behavioural, neurological and evolutionary terms, it may be more profitable to examine the degree rather than the direction of asymmetry.

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Section: Genetic Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 92%

The evolution and genetics of cerebral asymmetry

Corballis

2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

235

167

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“…The hand preference should be taken into account (Pujol et al 1999;Knecht et al 2000) when studying the language plasticity as linear relationship has been shown between handedness and atypical dominance, with increased incidence of the reorganisation in strong left-handed patients. In the present study, at a fi rst glance, our results did not show correlation between handedness and MR signal intensity values measured in left and right ROIs.…”

Section: Associated Hippocampal Sclerosismentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional MRI evidence for language plasticity in adult epileptic patients: Preliminary results

Baciu¹

2008

NDT

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The present fMRI study explores the cerebral reorganisation of language in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, according to the age of seizures onset (early or late) and the hippocampal sclerosis (associated or not). Seven right-handed control volunteers and seven preoperative adult epileptic patients performed a rhyme decision (language condition) and a visual detection (control condition) tasks in visually presented words and unreadable characters, respectively. All patients were left hemisphere dominant for language. Appropriate statistical analyses provided the following preliminary results: (1) patients compared with healthy subjects showed lower degree of hemispheric lateralization with supplementary involvement of the right hemisphere; (2) the degree of hemispheric specialization depends on the considered region; (3) patients with early seizures show signs of temporal and parietal reorganization more frequently than patients with late onset of seizures; (4) patients with early seizures show a tendency for intra-hemispheric frontal reorganisation; (5) associated hippocampal sclerosis facilitates the inter-hemispheric shift of temporal activation. Although our patients were left hemisphere predominant for language, the statistical analyses indicated that the degree of lateralization was signifi cantly lower than in healthy subjects. This result has been considered as the indication of atypical lateralization of language.

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“…Verbal information is processed more efficiently when presented to the right than the left ear (Belin et al, 1998;Kimura, 1961) due to the hemispheric asymmetry in language processing, with Broca's speech area located in the left hemisphere, (Belin et al, 1998;Pujol, Deus, Losilla, & Capdevila, 1999;Toga & Thompson, 2003). The literature suggests that there should be an overall shift towards a right channel bias for loudness judgments for all time-related words.…”

Section: Study 32mentioning

confidence: 99%

Abstract Concepts in Grounded Cognition

Lakens¹

2017

Preprint

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concepts in grounded cognitionAbstracte concepten in gegronde cognitie References 115 Summary in Dutch 133Curriculum Vitae 139 5 Introduction M orality, time, and valence are highly abstract concepts. Exactly how people are able to think and talk about abstract concepts is a question that has intrigued philosophers and scientists for centuries. In this thesis I focus on the question how people represent the meaning of abstract concepts, by investigating whether abstract concepts are understood through the use of metaphors. Metaphors allow people to think about abstract concepts in terms of concrete experiences. For example, the scales of Lady Justice are a metaphor for justice. People might not be able to see the future, but it can be represented as being ahead of us. Black knights in fairytales are usually evil, and the color of their armor is a metaphoric representation of the relation they have with the knights in shining armor. These and similar metaphors are not only used to intentionally communicate the meaning of abstract concepts, but these metaphoric representations also underlie abstract conceptual thought. How the meaning of abstract concepts is grounded in concrete experiences is the topic of this dissertation.Broadly speaking, two views exist on how abstract concepts are represented in our mind. On the one hand, amodal views share the common theme that people think in a purely symbolic language, where concepts 6 are represented as artificial symbols, and computational operations are performed upon these symbols during conceptual processing (Dennett, 1969;Fodor, 1975;Pylyshyn, 1984;Jackendoff, 2002). These artificial symbols are inherently non-perceptual; none of the original sensory or motor information from any modality (e.g., vision, touch, sound, smell, etc) which created these symbols is present when the final amodal symbols are used to represent concepts. On the other hand, several views on the representation of concepts have emerged over the last decennium which all share the idea that conceptual processing is perceptual in nature (e.g., Barsalou, 1999;Gallese & Lakoff, 2005;Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002;Jeannerod, 2001;Pulvermüller, 1999;Zwaan, 2004). According to these grounded approaches to cognition, conceptual thought consists of representations built on concrete sensorimotor information. For example, understanding the word 'kick' is assumed to depend at least in part on the activation of the muscles used to perform a kicking motion.As a result of the growing number of empirical studies that have investigated the role of sensorimotor activation in language comprehension, a consensus is emerging that sensorimotor areas in the brain are activated when people read words related to concrete concepts (Zwaan, 2009;Mahon & Caramazza, 2009;Vigliocco & Meteyard, 2008). For example, thinking about the color of a banana activates brain areas in the visual cortex (Simmons, Ramjee, Beauchamp, McRae, Martin, & Barsalou, 2007). Thinking about the color of a banana leads to remarkably similar pattern...

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Cerebral lateralization of language in normal left-handed people studied by functional MRI

Abstract: Silent word generation lateralizes to the left cerebral hemisphere in both handedness groups, but right-hemisphere participation is frequent in normal left-handed subjects. Exclusive right-hemisphere activation rarely occurred in the frontal lobe region studied.

Cited by 614 publications

References 31 publications

The evolution and genetics of cerebral asymmetry

The evolution and genetics of cerebral asymmetry

Functional MRI evidence for language plasticity in adult epileptic patients: Preliminary results

Abstract Concepts in Grounded Cognition

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