Latest Lateralization of brain function Stories
Some athletes may improve their performance under pressure simply by squeezing a ball or clenching their left hand before competition to activate certain parts of the brain, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. In three experiments with experienced soccer players, judo experts and badminton players, researchers in Germany tested the athletes' skills during practice and then in stressful competitions before a large crowd or video camera....
Both human infants and baboons have a stronger preference for using their right hand to gesture than for a simple grasping task, supporting the hypothesis that language development, which is lateralized in the left part of the human brain, is based on a common gestural communication system. The results are reported in the Mar. 21 issue of the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Helene Meunier of the University of Strasbourg in France, found that hand preference of both...
Readers whose mother tongue is Arabic have more challenges reading in Arabic than native Hebrew or English speakers have reading their native languages, because the two halves of the brain divide the labor differently when the brain processes Arabic than when it processes Hebrew or English. That is the result of a new study conducted by two University of Haifa researchers, Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim of the Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities and the Learning...
Researchers say that the left hemisphere of the brain may not be just logic and math, but could also help play a big role in creativity as well. Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) are working to try and pin down the exact source of creativity in the brain. "We want to know: how does creativity work in the brain?" Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor of neuroscience at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, said in a statement. The right...
A new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit finds a strong correlation between brain dominance and the ear used to listen to a cell phone, with more than 70 percent of participants holding their cell phone up to the ear on the same side as their dominant hand. Detroit, Michigan (PRWEB) February 22, 2012 DETROIT - If you’re a left brain thinker, chances are you use your right hand to hold your cell phone up to your right ear, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in...
Complementary image processing in the cerebral hemispheres The left brain/right brain dichotomy has been prominent on the pop psychology scene since Nobel Laureate Roger Sperry broached the subject in the 1960s. The left is analytical while the right is creative, so goes the adage. And then there is the quasi-scientific obsession with "the face." Facial recognition technology and facial microexpressions are the stuff of television crime dramas, such as Person of Interest and Lie to Me....
New study reveals that 'categorical' information is processed by the right hemisphereConsider the simple situation in which you are walking around the kitchen and decide to pick up your own cup of tea, which is identical to others lying on the table. Your brain chooses the correct cup of tea by using different types of information that you have stored about the position of the cup in relation to the kitchen table. The information can be represented in qualitative terms (left, right, above,...
Recovery from aphasia is a dynamic, ongoing processMost people who survive a stroke recover some degree of their motor, sensory and cognitive functions over the following months and years. This recovery is commonly believed to reflect a reorganization of the central nervous system that occurs after brain damage. Now a new study, published in the February 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, sheds further light on the recovery process through its effect on language skills.For almost all...
Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, have identified a genetic variant which influences whether a person with dyslexia is more skilled with either the left or right hand. The finding identifies a novel gene for handedness and provides the first genetic evidence to support a much speculated link between handedness and a language-related disorder.The majority of people worldwide are right-handed. Since the left side of the brain controls the right...
New research has found that learning the name of a color changes the part of the brain that handles color perception.Researchers reported infants perceive color in the right hemisphere of the brain, while adults do the job in the brain's left hemisphere.The change occurred when the toddlers learned the names to attach to particular colors. The scientists reported this in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science."It appears, as far as we can tell, that somehow...
