Download Laterality Ebook PDF

Laterality: Functional Asymmetry in the Intact Brain focuses on brain function and laterality as well as the various methods in assessing behavioral asymmetries, including handedness. It reviews the literature on perceptual-cognitive laterality effects in different sensory modalities, the lateralization of emotion and motor behavior, and the electrophysiological evidence. It also highlights some of the problems with the existing research and offers suggestions about the direction of future research. Organized into 17 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of cerebral asymmetry and the origins and mechanisms of lateralization. Then, it discusses the individual differences in laterality, methods and measurement used in laterality studies, and experiments on dichotic listening and auditory lateralization. The next chapters focus on the link between verbal laterality and handedness, tactual and perceptual laterality, asymmetry of motor performance, lateralization of emotional processes, and physiological measures of asymmetry. The book also introduces the handedness and its relation to cerebral function, genetics of laterality, development of cerebral lateralization, individual differences in cerebral organization, sex differences in laterality, reading- and language-related deficits, and control of the active hemisphere before concluding with a chapter discussing the experimental or strategy effects, the concept of complementary specialization, and the dichotomy between the two hemispheres of the brain. This book is a valuable resource for neuropsychologists, experimental psychologists, neurologists, and educators interested in understanding human brain function.

Human Laterality presents the main facts of human laterality as they are known. Drawing on evidence from normal, intact human beings and neurological patients, along with material on asymmetries in other species, this book traces the development of laterality, its evolution, and inheritance. This text also reviews the literature on the relation between laterality and developmental disorders of speech and language, including dyslexia, stuttering, and dysphasia. This book is organized into nine chapters and begins with an overview of the development of knowledge and ideas about laterality over the course of history. This text gives an account of the myths that abound regarding handedness, including the association of right with male and left with female, with the goal of demythologizing human laterality. It argues that there is a common basis to both handedness and cerebral lateralization, and indeed to other manifestations of human laterality such as eyedness and footedness, and that lateralization is fundamentally biological rather than sociocultural. Human laterality is also seen as an innate disposition rather than a matter of learning or imitation. In the final chapter, this book speculates about the possible origins of laterality in the fundamental asymmetries of living molecules and of particle physics. This book is essential reading for biologists and researchers interested in the human anatomy.

This book arrays recent research on the neural and behavioral lateralization of the brain relying heavily on animal modes. The authors employ the comparative method to enhance our understanding of behavior, specifically through hand use and "handedness" by drawing comparisons with studies involving primates. Topics discussed include Patterns of Lateralized Behavior in Prosimians; Behavioral Lateralization in Language-Trained Chimpanzees; Patterns of Handedness: Comparative Study of Nursery School Children and Captive Gorillas; and Rotational Behavior in Children and Adults. It is the first book of its kind devoted entirely to the question of behavioral asymmetries in all primates and thus presents a milestone as it recognizes the accumulating evidence of asymmetry and lateralized behavior in the non-human nervous system.