Lateralization of brain function was established on the basis of clinical-pathological correlations over a century ago. In the past two decades, this line of research has attempted to link the complex behaviors evident in schizophrenia to the failure to develop and maintain a normal pattern of hemispheric activity. This issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin reviews and presents data from multiple per...

Writing or figure tracing, because there is represented a high level of integration, seems to have become the one diagnostic criterion. This is a serious error. Very early in the life of the child band preference does not decidedly manifest itself. Later, by forty-eight months, a preferred hand does become evident. With prolonged training, although the non-preferred hand improves considerably, ...

Twins have always attracted attentionÐ Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux, Jacob and Esau, Fafner and Fasold; there has always been intrigue, mystery and confusion surrounding two-in-one and one-in-two. The interest for Laterality and lateralisation is compounded, because if it is the difference between an individual’ s two sides that results in laterality, how are those two sides represented...

Laterality of inner organs is a wide-spread characteristic of vertebrates and beyond. It is ultimately controlled by the left-asymmetric activation of the Nodal signaling cascade in the lateral plate mesoderm of the neurula stage embryo, which results from a cilia-driven leftward flow of extracellular fluids at the left-right organizer. This scenario is widely accepted for laterality determinat...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the reliability of temporal and frontal functional MRI (fMRI) activation for the assessment of language dominance, as compared with the Wada test. PATIENTS AND METHODS Ten patients with temporal lobe epilepsy were studied using blood oxygen level dependent fMRI and echoplanar imaging (1.5-T). Three tasks were used: semantic verbal fluency, covert sentence repetition, and...

Historically, most theoretical accounts of hemispheric specialisation have proposed a single underlying factor that leads to left hemisphere language and right hemisphere visuospatial processing in the majority of people. More recently empirical evidence has started to challenge this view, suggesting lateralisation of language and visuospatial attention are independent. However, so far studies ...

The involvement of the right and left hemispheres in mediating language functions has been measured in a variety of ways over the centuries since the relative dominance of the left hemisphere was first known. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) presents a useful non-invasive method of assessing lateralisation that is being increasingly used in clinical practice and research. However, t...

OBJECTIVES To compare the concordance of prostate cancer (PCa) laterality between the extended transperineal (TP) or transrectal (TR) prostate biopsy (BP) and radical prostatectomy (RP) specimens. To identify predictors of laterality agreement between BP and RP. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data from 533 consecutive patients with PCa (278 TP and 255 TR-diagnosed) treated with RP were analyzed. A 12-...

BACKGROUND Tinnitus and headache are frequent disorders. Here, we aimed to investigate whether the occurrence of headache among tinnitus patients is purely coincidental or whether tinnitus and headache are pathophysiologically linked. We investigated a large sample of patients with tinnitus and headache to estimate prevalence rates of different headache forms, to determine the relationship betw...

Brain lateralization, critical to mediation of cognitive functions and to "multitasking," is disrupted in conditions such as attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia. Both low-level lead (Pb) exposure and prenatal stress (PS) have been associated with mesocorticolimbic system-mediated executive-function cognitive and attention deficits. Mesocorticolimbic systems demonstrate significant late...