The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants

Chiron, Catherine; Jambaqué, Isabelle; Nabbout, Rima; Lounes, R; Syrota, A.; Dulac, Olivier

doi:10.1093/brain/120.6.1057

Cited by 335 publications

(198 citation statements)

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“…The result suggests an association between MT and a heightened right hemispheric activity already in children. A general bias towards right-hemisphere processing has long been described in infants and children (69), but our findings suggest that it may be modulated by gender as much as it is in adults (70). As gender-specific hormonal influences on dynamic functional laterality (71) and pain perception (72) is not a probable candidate to account for the interactions between laterality, MT and gender, future research is clearly needed to explore these fascinating, yet confusing interplay more thoroughly.…”

Section: Mt Modulates Pain Processing In Boys But Not Pamentioning

confidence: 62%

Expectancy-Induced Placebo Analgesia in Children and the Role of Magical Thinking

Kempler

Kossowsky

Schwarz

et al. 2014

The Journal of Pain

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Expectations and beliefs shape the experience of pain. This is most evident in context-induced, placebo analgesia, which has recently been shown to interact with the trait of magical thinking (MT) in adults. In children, placebo analgesia and the possible roles that MT and gender might play as modulators of placebo analgesia have remained unexplored. Using a paradigm in which heat-pain stimuli were applied to both forearms, we investigated whether MT and gender can influence the magnitude of placebo analgesia in children. Participants were 49 right-handed children (aged 6-9 years) who were randomly assigned -stratified for MT and gender -to either an analgesia-expectation or a controlexpectation condition. For both conditions, the placebo was a blue-colored hand disinfectant that was applied to the children's forearms. Independent of MT, the placebo treatment significantly increased both heat pain threshold and tolerance. The threshold placebo effect was more pronounced for girls than boys. In addition, independent of the expectation treatment, low-MT boys showed a lower tolerance increase on the left compared to the right side. Finally, MT specifically modulated tolerance on the right forearmside: low-MT boys showed an increase, whereas high-MT boys showed a decrease in heat pain tolerance. This study documented a substantial expectation-induced placebo analgesia response in children (girls > boys) and demonstrated MT and gender-dependent laterality effects in pain perception. The findings may help improve individualized pain management for children. PERSPECTIVE: The study documents the first experimental evidence for a substantial expectancy-induced placebo analgesia response in healthy children from 6 to 9 years of age. Moreover, the effect was substantially higher than the placebo response typically found in adults. The findings may help improve individualized pain management for children. Conflicts of Interest and Source of FundingThe authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. This research was supported by the University of Basel.Running Title: Placebo Analgesia and Magical Thinking in Children Krummenacher et al., 2014 1 Abstract Objective: Higher brain functions such as expectations and beliefs shape the experience of pain. This is most evident in context-induced placebo analgesia (PA), which was recently shown in adults to interact with the trait of magical thinking (MT).In children, PA and the possible relationship between PA and MT has remained unexplored.Methods: Using a lateralized heat-pain paradigm, we investigated the possible modulatory role of PA expectation and MT in response to nociceptive stimuli on the right and left forearm.Participants were 49 right-handed children (6-9 years). In a between-subjects design, half of them were either randomly -stratified for MT and gender -assigned to an analgesia-expectation or a control-expectation condition. Results:Results indicate that, independent of MT, the placebo procedure significantly increased both heat pain threshold (...

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Section: Mt Modulates Pain Processing In Boys But Not Pamentioning

confidence: 62%

Expectancy-Induced Placebo Analgesia in Children and the Role of Magical Thinking

Kempler

Kossowsky

Schwarz

et al. 2014

The Journal of Pain

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“…If language can account for the LH bias in adults, what can account for the strong RH bias in infants? Strong hemispheric asymmetries in infancy are not unusual (24)(25)(26)(27)(28), and some researchers have even argued for a RH dominance in infancy caused by greater RH than LH cerebral blood flow (35). Changes in side of lateralization across development are also not unusual and are found for other domains such as some aspects of language processing (26,36).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults

Franklin

Drivonikou

Bevis

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

177

149

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Both adults and infants are faster at discriminating between two colors from different categories than two colors from the same category, even when between-and within-category chromatic separation sizes are equated. For adults, this categorical perception (CP) is lateralized; the category effect is stronger for the right visual field (RVF)-left hemisphere (LH) than the left visual field (LVF)-right hemisphere (RH). Converging evidence suggests that the LH bias in color CP in adults is caused by the influence of lexical color codes in the LH. The current study investigates whether prelinguistic color CP is also lateralized to the LH by testing 4-to 6-month-old infants. A colored target was shown on a differently colored background, and time to initiate an eye movement to the target was measured. Target background pairs were either from the same or different categories, but with equal target-background chromatic separations. Infants were faster at initiating an eye movement to targets on different-category than same-category backgrounds, but only for targets in the LVF-RH. In contrast, adults showed a greater category effect when targets were presented to the RVF-LH. These results suggest that whereas color CP is stronger in the LH than RH in adults, prelinguistic CP in infants is lateralized to the RH. The findings suggest that language-driven CP in adults may not build on prelinguistic CP, but that language instead imposes its categories on a LH that is not categorically prepartitioned.language and thought ͉ nature/nurture ͉ lateralization ͉ perceptual development C ategorical perception (CP) of color is shown when two colors that belong to different color categories (between-category judgments) are discriminated faster, or more accurately, than two colors belonging to the same color category (within-category judgments), even when between-and within-category chromatic separation sizes are equated (1). ʈ This effect is found in adults (2-5), children and toddlers (6, 7), and infants (8-10). The role of language in the effect has been extensively debated (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14). For example, some have advanced the hypothesis that the on-line use of language is the origin of the effect: comparing stimulus labels aids discrimination for between-category pairs and/or hinders discrimination for within-category pairs. In support of this hypothesis, for adult participants, CP is found only if the category boundary is marked in the participant's language (3, 12, 13), and verbal interference eliminates CP, but visual interference does not (4,5,13,14). It has, however, been found that color CP occurs prelinguistically in toddlers and infants, who have no color language (6,(8)(9)(10).A recent set of studies looking at hemispheric asymmetries in color CP has added a new perspective on the debate. Gilbert et al. (14), using a visual search task, found that the time to detect a colored target among differently colored distractors was faster when target and distractors were from different categories (e.g., bl...

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“…In typically developing children, brain growth is a slow, experience modulated process (Huttenlocher, 2002) with regional variation in the timing of the development of cerebral cortex (Huttenlocher and Dabholkar, 1997). The right hemisphere develops faster than in the left hemisphere in the first year of life (Toga and Thompson, 2003) and remains dominant until approximately 3 years of age (Chiron et al, 1997). Putative language areas (BA 44/45) exhibit adult-like cytoarchitectonic asymmetry at an even later point in development than the emergence of generalized left hemisphere dominance (Amunts et al, 2003).…”

Section: Early Brain Growth Abnormalities and Lateralization Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, brain growth in autism ceases before the mature pattern of left hemisphere dominance is reached in typically developing children (Chiron et al, 1997), and in the majority of children with autism spectrum disorders, prior to the emergence of complex language (Charman et al, 2003). Thus, unlike typical development where extended periods of brain growth coincide with language acquisition and mastery, in autism, language acquisition typically occurs subsequent to brain growth, without the benefits of neuroplasticity to promote the development of adaptive neural connections.…”

Section: Early Brain Growth Abnormalities and Lateralization Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Atypical functional lateralization of language in autism spectrum disorders

et al. 2008

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Impaired language is a prominent behavioral marker of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but its neurobiological underpinnings are incompletely understood. We studied letter and category fluency in 14 high functioning ASD individuals and 14 age-matched controls. Each fluency condition was compared to self-paced repetition of the word "nothing." Responses were recorded to monitor performance. In letter fluency, the ASD group had significantly greater activation than controls in the right frontal and right superior temporal lobe. Between-group differences were not observed in left prefrontal cortex. By examining functional asymmetry in frontal cortex, we found that the ASD group had significantly reduced lateralization of activation patterns in letter fluency compared to the controls. In category fluency, no between-group differences in lateralization were found, in light of greater bilateral activation in controls. These findings indicate reduced hemispheric differentiation for certain verbal fluency tasks in ASD, consistent with some previous evidence of atypical functional and structural asymmetries in autism. Abnormal functional organization may contribute to the language impairment seen in ASD.

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The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants

Cited by 335 publications

References 0 publications

Expectancy-Induced Placebo Analgesia in Children and the Role of Magical Thinking

Expectancy-Induced Placebo Analgesia in Children and the Role of Magical Thinking

Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults

Atypical functional lateralization of language in autism spectrum disorders

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