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In most individuals, language production and visuospatial skills are subserved predominantly by the left and right hemispheres, respectively. Functional Transcranial Doppler (fTCD) provides a noninvasive and relatively low-cost method for measuring functional lateralization. However, while the silent word generation task provides an accurate and reliable paradigm for investigating lateralization of language production, there is no comparable gold-standard method for measuring visuospatial skills. Thirty undergraduate students (19 females) completed a task of spatial memory while undergoing fTCD recording. Participants completed this task at two different time points, separated by between 26 to 155 days. The relative activation between hemispheres averaged across all participants was found to be consistent across testing sessions. This was observed at the individual level also, with a quantitative index of lateralization showing high reproducibility. These findings indicate that the use of the spatial memory task with fTCD is a robust methodology for examining laterality of visuospatial skills.

Original publication

DOI

10.1017/S1355617709990555

Type

Journal article

Journal

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

Publication Date

11/2009

Volume

15

Pages

1028 - 1032

Keywords

Adolescent, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cerebrovascular Circulation, Color Perception, Female, Functional Laterality, Humans, Language, Male, Memory, Photic Stimulation, Spatial Behavior, Time Factors, Ultrasonography, Doppler, Transcranial, Visual Perception, Young Adult