Functional cerebral lateralization: neurobiology and clinical aspects in childhood

Abstract
Anatomical and functional evidences of cerebral hemispheric asymmetries are reviewed in reference to fetal life, infancy and childhood. In general, left hemisphere deals with linguistic-sequenced-analytic-logic-deductive cognitive processing, whereas the right hemisphere is involved in spatial-simultaneous-inductive-intuitive tasks; attention and interactional functions predominate on the right hemisphere, too. The clinical and technological means to diagnose the functional lateralization in individual patients are discussed.

A critical review is made of abnormal lateralizations and interhemispheric supplencies in various neuropsychiatric conditions of childhood: learning disabilities, epilepsy, attention deficit disorder, mental deficiency with chromosomopathies and infantile autism.

CITATION  Rev Med Univ Navarra. 1989 Apr-Jun;33(2):89-99