The study looks at a neglected aspect of brain lateralization, says cognitive neuroscientist Michael Corballis of the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
But despite this cognitive boost, scientists have observed a great range of brain lateralization among fish and birds.
This study demonstrates that regional correlations between CT and CSA asymmetries are a characteristic of brain structural organization that could be of significance in the choice of structural markers in studies dealing with the genetic basis of brain lateralization.
Our survey involved applying a questionnaire (based on Dr. Roge r Sperry's theory of brain lateralization) to 128 respondents, aged 19-37, students of Applied Electronics, Computer Science, and Environmental Engineering.
This study raises the possibility that defects in the establishment of brain lateralization could indeed be causative of cognitive or other symptoms of brain dysfunction.
Moreover, although communicative behaviors and noncommunicative manipulative activities do share some surface properties, they may represent two distinct facets of brain lateralization (e.g., Liu et al. 2009).
show that sensory responses to light and odor are lateralized in the larval zebrafish habenula and that loss of brain asymmetry leads to a loss of responses to visual or olfactory stimuli, suggesting that brain lateralization may play a significant role in sensory processing and circuit function.
The molecular genetic basis of human brain lateralization is unknown, and recent studies have suggested that gene expression in the cerebral cortex is bilaterally symmetrical.
Another potential key to the emergence of handedness and brain lateralization might be the fact that manipulative activities, communicative gestures, and language are all goal-directed actions.
If developmental patterns observed in human children parallel the evolution of language at the phylogenetic level, we can therefore infer that manipulative activities per se were not the key to the emergence of handedness and brain lateralization.
