Hemispheric asymmetry of EEG alpha activation: Effects of gender and familial handedness

Twenty-four male and twenty-four female undergraduates took part in an experiment to investigate the effects of gender and familial handedness on hemispheric activation during numeric and visuospatial thinking. Each gender group was divided into twelve subjects with close left handed relatives and twelve subjects without. All subjects were overtly right handed. EEG alpha activity was recorded from left and right occipital and parietal regions with respect to mastoid references while the subjects performed numeric tasks with eyes open and with eyes closed, a face-recognition and a tactile-discrimination (figural-unification) task. EEG alpha power was quantified during these conditions and during relaxed wakefulness with eyes open and eyes closed. Relative activation, (suppression of alpha activity from rest) of left and right parietal regions during numeric and spatial tasks was found to depend upon gender and familial handedness. Males, not females, tended to switch from left hemisphere activation during face recognition. Irrespective of gender and to some extent of task, a tendency towards greater activation of the right hemisphere was associated with the possession of left handers among close relatives.

[1]  D. Galin.  LATERAL SPECIALIZATION AND PSYCHIATRIC ISSUES: SPECULATIONS ON DEVELOPMENT AND THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS * , 1977, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[2]  R. Nebes,et al.  Dominance of the minor hemisphere in commissurotomized man on a test of figural unification. , 1972, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[3]  M S Rabinovitch,et al.  Handedness: Proficiency versus Stated Preference , 1970, Perceptual and motor skills.

[4]  E. Capitani,et al.  Sex Differences in Recovery from Aphasia , 1982, Cortex.

[5]  A. Salamy,et al.  Stability of EEG laterality effects. , 1979, Psychophysiology.

[6]  K. Nelson,et al.  Structure and strategy in learning to talk. , 1973 .

[7]  J. Inglis,et al.  Sex Differences in the Cognitive Effects of Unilateral Brain Damage , 1982, Cortex.

[8]  C. Hutt.  Sex differences in human development. , 1972, Human development.

[9]  M. D. Rugg,et al.  The specificity of intrahemispheric EEG alpha coherence asymmetry related to psychological task , 1979, Biological Psychology.

[10]  J. Mcglone.  Sex Differences in Functional Brain Asymmetry , 1978, Cortex.

[11]  A. Gates.  Sex Differences in Reading Ability , 1961, The Elementary School Journal.

[12]  C. Rebert,et al.  Functional cerebral asymmetry and performance. III. Reaction time as a function of task, hand, sex, and EEG asymmetry. , 1978, Psychophysiology.

[13]  D. Tucker,et al.  Sex differences and lateral specialization of hemispheric functioning , 1976, Neuropsychologia.

[14]  M. Annett.  The distribution of manual asymmetry. , 1972, British journal of psychology.

[15]  K. A. Provins,et al.  The relationship between E.E.G. activity and handedness. , 1972, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior.

[16]  T. Rasmussen,et al.  INTRACAROTID SODIUM AMYTAL FOR THE LATERALIZATION OF CEREBRAL SPEECH DOMINANCE; OBSERVATIONS IN 123 PATIENTS. , 1964, Journal of neurosurgery.

[17]  W. Haynes,et al.  Sentence Imagery and Recall: An Electroencephalographic Evaluation of Hemispheric Processing in Males and Females , 1981, Cortex.

[18]  G. Keppel,et al.  Design and Analysis: A Researcher's Handbook , 1976 .

[19]  M. Humphrey.  CONSISTENCY OF HAND USAGE: A PRELIMINARY ENQUIRY , 1951 .

[20]  Jeannine Herron,et al.  Differential right hemisphere engagement in visuospatial tasks , 1980, Neuropsychologia.

[21]  H. Ehrlichman,et al.  EEG asymmetry during covert mental activity. , 1980, Psychophysiology.

[22]  W. Ray,et al.  Spatial abilities, sex differences and EEG functioning , 1981, Neuropsychologia.

[23]  S. Butler,et al.  EEG correlates of cerebral dominance. , 1976, Advances in psychobiology.

[24]  B. J. Winer.  Statistical Principles in Experimental Design , 1992 .

[25]  S. G. Vandenberg,et al.  Handedness and Spatial Ability , 1982, Cortex.

[26]  A. Glass.  Intensity of attenuation of alpha activity by mental arithmetic in females and males , 1968 .

[27]  R. E. Hicks,et al.  Human handedness: a partial cross-fostering study. , 1976, Science.

[28]  L. Wilkins.  Cerebral Dominance and its Relation to Psychological Function , 1963, Neurology.

[29]  J. Mcglone,et al.  Sex differences in the cerebral organization of verbal functions in patients with unilateral brain lesions. , 1977, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[30]  D. Ingvar,et al.  Electroencephalographic changes in the dominant hemisphere during memorizing and reasoning. , 1977, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[31]  O. Zangwill.  On Cerebral Dominance , 1982 .

[32]  J. Doyle,et al.  Lateral specialization of cognitive mode: II. EEG frequency analysis. , 1974, Psychophysiology.

[33]  W. McKeever,et al.  Visual and Auditory Language Processing Asymmetries: Influences of Handedness, Familial Sinistrality, and Sex , 1977, Cortex.

[34]  S. Butler,et al.  Sex differences in human cerebral function. , 1984, Progress in brain research.

[35]  D. Tucker.  Sex differences in hemispheric specialization for synthetic visuospatial functions , 1976, Neuropsychologia.

[36]  S. Edwards,et al.  Language and intelligence in dysphasia: are they related? , 1976, The British journal of disorders of communication.

[37]  M. Rugg,et al.  Dissociation of alpha and theta activity as a function of verbal and visuospatial tasks. , 1982, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[38]  H. Lansdell.  Laterality of Verbal Intelligence in the Brain , 1962, Science.

[39]  J. Doyle,et al.  EEG patterns during 'cognitive' tasks. II. Analysis of controlled tasks. , 1979, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[40]  R. Ornstein,et al.  Sex and handedness differences in EEG measures of hemispheric specialization , 1982, Brain and Language.

[41]  M. Morley.  The Development and Disorders of Speech in Childhood , 1957 .

[42]  S. Butler,et al.  Asymmetries in the electroencephalogram associated with cerebral dominance. , 1974, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[43]  E. Warrington,et al.  Language laterality in left-handers assessed by unilateral E.C.T. , 1973, Neuropsychologia.

[44]  Familial Sinistrality and Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities , 1983, Cortex.

[45]  Jeannine Herron,et al.  Effects of task difficulty on EEG measures of cerebral engagement , 1978, Neuropsychologia.

[46]  M. Annett,et al.  Mathematical Ability and Lateral Asymmetry , 1982, Cortex.

[47]  M Annett,et al.  Handedness in families , 1973, Annals of human genetics.

[48]  P. Bakan.  Handedness and Birth Order , 1971, Nature.

[49]  E. Zurif,et al.  Familial handedness and left-right differences in auditory and visual perception , 1969 .

[50]  P. Satz,et al.  Superiority of right visual half-fields in right-handers for recall of digits presented at varying rates. , 1971, Neuropsychologia.

[51]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  Sex differences in patterns of EEG asymmetry , 1976, Biological Psychology.

[52]  J. Mcglone,et al.  Sex differences in cerebral processing of visuospatial tasks. , 1973, Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior.

[53]  H. Lansdell.  The Use of Factor Scores from the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale of Intelligence in Assessing Patients with Temporal Lobe Removals , 1968 .

[54]  J. Earle,et al.  The effect of sex and task difficulty on EEG alpha activity in association with arithmetic , 1982, Biological Psychology.

[55]  J. Doyle,et al.  Electroencephalogram correlates of higher cortical functions. , 1979, Science.

[56]  C. Rebert,et al.  Differential hemispheric activation during complex visuomotor performance. , 1978, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[57]  F. Herzberg,et al.  A Study of Sex Differences on the Primary Mental Abilities Test , 1954 .

[58]  G. Hammond,et al.  Sex differences in task-dependent EEG asymmetries. , 1979, Psychophysiology.

[59]  J G Beaumont,et al.  Asymmetry in EEG alpha coherence and power: effects of task and sex. , 1978, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[60]  H J Hannay,et al.  Visual perception of line direction in patients with unilateral brain disease , 1975, Neurology.

[61]  A. Gale,et al.  Bilateral EEG differentiation of stimuli , 1976, Biological Psychology.

[62]  C. H. Vanderwolf,et al.  The relation between hand preference and the performance of individual finger movements by left and right hands. , 1970, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[63]  W. Haynes,et al.  Recognition and Recall: An Electroencephalographic Investigation of Hemispheric Alpha Asymmetries for Males and Females on Perceptual and Retrieval Tasks , 1981, Perceptual and motor skills.

[64]  W. Lishman,et al.  Hand Preference Patterns in Psychiatric Patients , 1976, British Journal of Psychiatry.