Skip Navigation



Brain Advance Access published online on October 25, 2008
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awn266
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
131/12/3193    most recent
awn266v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Whitehouse, A. J. O.
Right arrow Articles by Bishop, D. V. M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Whitehouse, A. J. O.
Right arrow Articles by Bishop, D. V. M.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cerebral dominance for language function in adults with specific language impairment or autism

Andrew J. O. Whitehouse and Dorothy V. M. Bishop

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Correspondence to: Correspondence to: Andrew Whitehouse, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK E-mail: andrew.whitehouse{at}psy.ox.ac.uk

A link between developmental language disorders and atypical cerebral lateralization has been postulated since the 1920s, but evidence has been indirect and inconsistent. The current study investigated this proposal using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD), which assesses blood flow through the middle cerebral arteries serving the left and right cerebral hemispheres. A group of young adults with specific language impairment (SLI; n = 11) were recruited along with three comparison groups: (i) adults with a history of childhood SLI, but who did not meet criteria for language impairment in adulthood (SLI-history; n = 9); (ii) adults with an autism spectrum disorder and a comorbid language impairment (ASD; n = 11) and (iii) adults with no history of developmental disorder (typical; n = 11). There was no difference between the chronological age of the four groups, and the SLI and typical groups were individually matched on gender and handedness. During fTCD measurement, participants were asked to silently generate words starting with a given letter and then later required to verbalize these. All of the participants in the SLI-history group and the majority of participants in the ASD (81.8%) and typical (90.9%) groups had greater activation in the left compared to the right middle cerebral arteries, indicating left hemisphere dominance. In contrast, the majority of participants in the SLI groups had language function lateralized to the right hemisphere (54.5%) or dispersed bilaterally (27.3%). These findings suggest that atypical cerebral dominance is not implicated in all cases of poor language development (i.e. ASD and SLI-history groups), but may act as a biological marker of persisting SLI.

Key Words: specific language impairment; autism; cerebral lateralization; language; functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography

Abbreviations: ASD, autism spectrum disorders; fTCD, functional transcranial Doppler; MCA, middle cerebral artery; SLI, specific language impairment

Received July 2, 2008. Revised August 29, 2008. Accepted September 19, 2008.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 BrainHome page
P. Helenius, T. Parviainen, R. Paetau, and R. Salmelin
Neural processing of spoken words in specific language impairment and dyslexia
Brain, July 1, 2009; 132(7): 1918 - 1927.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.