A Matter of Degree: Strength of Brain Asymmetry and Behaviour
School of Science and Technology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia
Academic Editor: John H. Graham
Symmetry 2017, 9(4), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym9040057
Received: 29 March 2017 / Revised: 11 April 2017 / Accepted: 11 April 2017 / Published: 18 April 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Brain Asymmetry of Structure and/or Function)
Research on a growing number of vertebrate species has shown that the left and right sides of the brain process information in different ways and that lateralized brain function is expressed in both specific and broad aspects of behaviour. This paper reviews the available evidence relating strength of lateralization to behavioural/cognitive performance. It begins by considering the relationship between limb preference and behaviour in humans and primates from the perspectives of direction and strength of lateralization. In birds, eye preference is used as a reflection of brain asymmetry and the strength of this asymmetry is associated with behaviour important for survival (e.g., visual discrimination of food from non-food and performance of two tasks in parallel). The same applies to studies on aquatic species, mainly fish but also tadpoles, in which strength of lateralization has been assessed as eye preferences or turning biases. Overall, the empirical evidence across vertebrate species points to the conclusion that stronger lateralization is advantageous in a wide range of contexts. Brief discussion of interhemispheric communication follows together with discussion of experiments that examined the effects of sectioning pathways connecting the left and right sides of the brain, or of preventing the development of these left-right connections. The conclusion reached is that degree of functional lateralization affects behaviour in quite similar ways across vertebrate species. Although the direction of lateralization is also important, in many situations strength of lateralization matters more. Finally, possible interactions between asymmetry in different sensory modalities is considered.
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Keywords:
functional asymmetry; strength of lateralization; direction of lateralization; advantages; disadvantages; vertebrate species; limb preference; eye bias
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Rogers, L.J. A Matter of Degree: Strength of Brain Asymmetry and Behaviour. Symmetry 2017, 9, 57.
AMA Style
Rogers LJ. A Matter of Degree: Strength of Brain Asymmetry and Behaviour. Symmetry. 2017; 9(4):57.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRogers, Lesley J. 2017. "A Matter of Degree: Strength of Brain Asymmetry and Behaviour" Symmetry 9, no. 4: 57.
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