Visual half-field experiments are a good measure of cerebral language dominance if used properly: Evidence from fMRI

Colateralization of Broca’s area and the visual word form area in left-handers: fMRI evidence

“…The target that had to be named was indicated by an arrow in the middle of the screen. Hunter and Brysbaert (2008) demonstrated that these tasks can serve as a screening method to find people with atypical speech dominance. The partial crossing of optic fibers makes stimuli presented in LVF/RVF initially fall into the RH/LH respectively, so that shorter naming latencies for stimuli in LVF can point to a RH dominance for speech (see also Barca et al, 2011).…”

“…The same task was previously used by Cai et al (2010) among others (Abbott, Waites, Lillywhite & Jackson, 2010;Badzakova-Trajkov, Häberling, Roberts & Corballis, 2010;Hunter & Brysbaert, 2008;Knecht et al, 1996). Participants were asked to silently generate as many words as possible starting with a letter presented in the middle of the screen ( b, d, k, l, m, n, p, r, s or t) during ten blocks of 15s.…”

“…As we have argued a number of times (Ellis & Brysbaert, 2010a, 2010bHunter & Brysbaert, 2008;Van der Haegen, Cai, Seurinck & Brysbaert, 2011), the best way to examine laterality patterns is to compare a group of participants with typical LH language dominance (found in about 95% of right-handers and 75% of left-handers; Knecht et al, 2000) with a group of participants with atypical RH or bilateral language dominance. Cai et al (2008Cai et al ( , 2010 followed this approach, but only tested small samples of four and five participants with atypical dominance so that only coarse conclusions about the variability of frontotemporal laterality patterns could be drawn.…”

Performance of younger and older adults in lateralised right and left hemisphere asymmetry tasks supports the HAROLD model

“…To the present study, such lateralized half-field paradigms are of major interest, because they can assess functional hemispheric asymmetries non-invasively (Hunter & Brysbaert, 2008), and are easily performed in the laboratory. Moreover, such paradigms should be sensitive to assess the relevance of the RHAM and the HAROLD model, because more than one task can be assessed within the same participant, i.e.…”

The Split Fovea Theory and the Leicester critique: What do the data say?

“…According to the Leicester critique these changes should result in a reduction of the asymmetry in the OVP curve. Because precise assessment of language dominance requires fMRI testing of left-handed participants (Hunter & Brysbaert, 2008b), we limited our studies to right-handed individuals who in addition were right eye dominant (needed because we tracked the right eye). The default expectation for these participants is that they will be left hemisphere dominant and, indeed, none of our participants showed the flat curve typically observed in right dominant participants (Brysbaert, 1994a;Hunter et al, 2007;Hunter & Brysbaert, 2008a).…”