title: Asymmetries in event-related potentials during rhyme-matching: confirmation of the null effects of handedness.
abstract: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 16 right- and 16 left-handed subjects during two variants of a sequential rhyme-judgement task. These variants manipulated the demands placed on short-term memory, by requiring subjects to match a word either with one or with three previously presented words. In both tasks, ERPs exhibited two lateral asymmetries: (i) during the interval prior to the final word, the CNV was more negative over the left hemisphere, and (ii) rhyme/non-rhyme differences in the amplitude of the N450 component of the ERPs to the final word were larger over the right than the left hemisphere. Neither of these asymmetries was smaller or more variable in left- than in right-handed subjects. It is suggested that these data may indicate that some aspects of language processing are, irrespective of handedness, relatively invariant in the direction and degree of their cerebral lateralization.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of St Andrews, U.K.
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Barrett
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Rugg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics