The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory
TL;DR: An inventory of 20 items with a set of instructions and response- and computational-conventions is proposed and the results obtained from a young adult population numbering some 1100 individuals are reported.
About: This article is published in Neuropsychologia.The article was published on 1971-03-01. It has received 33268 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Population.
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TL;DR: The results clearly demonstrate that the relationship between handedness and language dominance is not an artefact of cerebral pathology but a natural phenomenon.
Abstract: In most people the left hemisphere of the brain is dominant for language. Because of the increased incidence of atypical right-hemispheric language in left-handed neurological patients, a systematic association between handedness and dominance has long been suspected. To clarify the relationship between handedness and language dominance in healthy subjects, we measured lateralization directly by functional transcranial Doppler sonography in 326 healthy individuals using a word-generation task. The incidence of right-hemisphere language dominance was found to increase linearly with the degree of left-handedness, from 4% in strong right-handers (handedness = 100) to 15% in ambidextrous individuals and 27% in strong left-handers (handedness = -100). The relationship could be approximated by the formula: f1.gif" BORDER="0">. These results clearly demonstrate that the relationship between handedness and language dominance is not an artefact of cerebral pathology but a natural phenomenon.
1,370 citations
Cites background or methods from "The assessment and analysis of hand..."
...15% – handedness by the Edinburgh Inventory (%)/10....
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...Because of its good test–retest reliability, the Edinburgh Inventory has been used in many studies and, unlike other measures, allows good comparison between studies (Ransil and Schachter, 1994)....
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...We assessed handedness with the Edinburgh Inventory....
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...All subjects gave informed consent to participation in the study, which was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Münster....
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...Familial handedness only showed a significant effect on handedness (P 0.006)....
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TL;DR: It is proposed that the induced plasticity may represent a signature of associative long-term potentiation of cortical synapses or closely related neuronal mechanisms in the human cortex.
Abstract: Current models of motor cortical plasticity, developed in studies on experimental animals, emphasize the importance of the conjoint activity of somatosensory afferents and intrinsic motor cortical circuits. The hypothesis that an enduring change in excitability in the cortical output circuitry can be induced in the human motor cortex by a paired-stimulation protocol was tested. Low-frequency median nerve stimulation was paired with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the optimal cranial site for stimulating the abductor pollicis brevis muscle (APB). This protocol induced an increase in the amplitudes of the motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in the resting APB as well as a prolongation of the silent period measured in the precontracted APB following TMS; amplitudes of MEPs measured in voluntary contraction remained unchanged. Experiments testing the excitability of spinal motoneurons using F-wave studies and electrical stimulation of the brainstem suggested that the site of the plastic changes was within the motor cortex. The increases in resting amplitudes and silent period duration were conditionally dependent on the timing between the afferent and the magnetic stimulation in that they were present when events elicited by afferent and magnetic stimulation were synchronous at the level of the motor cortex. Plasticity induced by paired stimulation evolved rapidly (within 30 min), was persistent (minimum duration 30-60 min) yet reversible, and was topographically specific. This combination of features and the similarity to properties of induced enduring changes in synaptic efficacy, as elucidated in animal studies, leads us to propose that the induced plasticity may represent a signature of associative long-term potentiation of cortical synapses or closely related neuronal mechanisms in the human cortex.
1,355 citations
Cites methods from "The assessment and analysis of hand..."
...…as the stimulatorAll subjects were right-handed, except two who were leftintensity sufficient to evoke a silent period of duration ~160handed, according to the Oldfield handedness inventory ms in surface EMG recordings of the APB isometrically(Oldfield, 1971). contracted at 15% of maximum force....
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TL;DR: This review provides a critical framework within which two related topics are discussed: Do meaningful sex differences in verbal or spatial cerebral lateralization exist?
Abstract: Dual functional brain asymmetry refers to the notion that in most individuals the left cerebral hemisphere is specialized for language functions, whereas the right cerebral hemisphere is more important than the left for the perception, construction, and recall of stimuli that are difficult to verbalize. In the last twenty years there have been scattered reports of sex differences in degree of hemispheric specialization. This review provides a critical framework within which two related topics are discussed: Do meaningful sex differences in verbal or spatial cerebral lateralization exist? and, if so, Is the brain of one sex more symmetrically organized than the other? Data gathered on right-handed adults are examined from clinical studies of patients with unilateral brain lesions; from dichotic listening, tachistoscopic, and sensorimotor studies of functional asymmetries in non-brain-damaged subjects; from anatomical and electrophysiological investigations, as well as from the developmental literature. Retrospective and descriptive findings predominate over prospective and experimental methodologies. Nevertheless, there is an impressive accummulation of evidence suggesting that the male brain may be more asymmetrically organized than the female brain, both for verbal and nonverbal functions. These trends are rarely found in childhood but are often significant in the mature organism.
1,338 citations
TL;DR: Brain-mapping approaches show great promise for assessing factors that modulate cognitive specialization in the brain, including the ontogeny, phylogeny and genetic determinants of brain asymmetry.
Abstract: Brain asymmetry has been observed in animals and humans in terms of structure, function and behaviour. This lateralization is thought to reflect evolutionary, hereditary, developmental, experiential and pathological factors. Here, we review the diverse literature describing brain asymmetries, focusing primarily on anatomical differences between the hemispheres and the methods that have been used to detect them. Brain-mapping approaches, in particular, can identify and visualize patterns of asymmetry in whole populations, including subtle alterations that occur in disease, with age and during development. These and other tools show great promise for assessing factors that modulate cognitive specialization in the brain, including the ontogeny, phylogeny and genetic determinants of brain asymmetry.
1,308 citations
Cites background from "The assessment and analysis of hand..."
...It might also explain the greater incidence of left-handedness in male...
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TL;DR: Although partly in conflict with the classical model of language localization, FMRI findings are generally compatible with reported lesion data and provide additional support for ongoing efforts to refine and extend the classicalmodel.
Abstract: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) was used to identify candidate language processing areas in the intact human brain. Language was defined broadly to include both phonological and lexical-semantic functions and to exclude sensory, motor, and general executive functions. The language activation task required phonetic and semantic analysis of aurally presented words and was compared with a control task involving perceptual analysis of nonlinguistic sounds. Functional maps of the entire brain were obtained from 30 right-handed subjects. These maps were averaged in standard stereotaxic space to produce a robust "average activation map" that proved reliable in a split-half analysis. As predicted from classical models of language organization based on lesion data, cortical activation associated with language processing was strongly lateralized to the left cerebral hemisphere and involved a network of regions in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. Less consistent with classical models were (1) the existence of left hemisphere temporoparietal language areas outside the traditional "Wernicke area," namely, in the middle temporal, inferior temporal, fusiform, and angular gyri; (2) extensive left prefrontal language areas outside the classical "Broca area"; and (3) clear participation of these left frontal areas in a task emphasizing "receptive" language functions. Although partly in conflict with the classical model of language localization, these findings are generally compatible with reported lesion data and provide additional support for ongoing efforts to refine and extend the classical model.
1,306 citations
Cites background from "The assessment and analysis of hand..."
...Edinburgh Handedness Inventory laterality quotients (Oldfield, 1971) ranged from 58 to 100, indicating strong right-hand preferences for all subjects....
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References
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TL;DR: Right, mixed and left handers are found in binomial proportions in seven samples of varied subjects whose lateral preferences were ascertained by several methods.
Abstract: Right, mixed and left handers are found in binomial proportions in seven samples of varied subjects whose lateral prefernces were ascertained by several methods. These proportions have been obtained in previous studies of humans and animals when the performance of several actions has been recorded in complete samples and when consistent right and left subjects have been separated from those of mixed usage.
626 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1960
307 citations
"The assessment and analysis of hand..." refers background in this paper
...ZANGWILL'S [6] discussion of speech and handedness affords an apt illustration of this point....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors made an inquiry by means of a questionnaire which included a "handedness inventory" into the prevalence of left-handedness among musicians, and the difficulties, if any, which lefthanders experienced in acquiring executant skills.
Abstract: An inquiry by means of a questionnaire which included a ‘handedness inventory’ was made into the prevalence of left-handedness among musicians, and the difficulties, if any, which lefthanders experienced in acquiring executant skills. It was found that left-handedness is neither less nor more common in the group of musicians studied than in a population of psychology undergraduates, and that left-handedness did not in general occasion any special difficulty. The left-handers adapted successfully to the ‘right-handedness’ of their instruments, the only substantial connexion in which left-handed practices were retained being in conducting. It is suggested on the basis of these findings that ‘right-handedness’ is less a matter of superior inherent ‘dexterity’ or the capacity for agility, precision and speed in the right hand than of closer, more immediate, availability of the right hand as the instrument of the individual's conceptions and intentions. It is further suggested that the especial function of the dominant cerebral hemisphere is to mediate between the executive intentions of the individual and his physical means of expressing them, whether through manual or vocal channels.
115 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: It is true that a few cases of this disease are seen from time to time in Australia; but the patients have been immigrants infected in their country of Orkney in the Mediterranean area.
Abstract: This little book is a review of and contribution to the subject of language and its relationship to cerebral dominance In general it emphasizes that in right-handed people language function is nearly regularly and fairly strictly localized to the left hemisphere In left-handed and clearly ambidextrous people there is still a tendency for language to be localized in the left hemisphere, but its localization is not as complete, and various language functions may escape in injury to one hemisphere Recovery tends to be more complete following acute lesions of the left hemisphere in predominantly left-handed individuals
64 citations
Journal Article•
44 citations
"The assessment and analysis of hand..." refers methods in this paper
...HUMPHREY, M. Handedness and Cerebral Dominance....
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...DUROST [2], HULL [3], HUMPHREY [4] and ANNETT [5]....
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...METHOD, PROCEDURE, SUBJECTS In the course of a search for left-handed musicians by OLDEIED [8] a modified version of HUMPHREY’S [4] inventory was used, twenty items being selected from it....
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...Inventories of this kind have been devised and used by a large number of previous workers, e.g. DUROST [2], HULL [3], HUMPHREY [4] and ANNETT [5]....
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