title: Language lateralization in magnetoencephalography: two tasks to investigate hemispheric dominance.
abstract: Hemispheric specialization for language has been the focus of many studies, mainly using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Here, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate hemispheric dominance and time-dependent aspects of cortical language processing. We implemented a verb generation task and a newly designed vowel identification task. Eleven healthy adults were investigated. By using oscillatory magnetoencephalography spectral analysis, significant hemispheric differences were found for both tasks in cerebral language areas. Robust left-lateralization in frontal brain regions was observed with the verb generation task, confirming previous functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography studies. Our new vowel identification task yields significant left-lateralization in posterior language regions, making this silent and child-friendly task a valuable alternative for non-invasive language assessment in difficult populations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatric Neurology and Developmental Medicine, Children's Hospital, University of Tübingen, Germany. Volker.Ressel@med.uni-tuebingen.de
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ressel
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wilke
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lidzba
authors.forename: Hubert
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Preissl
authors.forename: Ingeborg
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Krägeloh-Mann
authors.forename: Werner
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lutzenberger
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D015225:Magnetoencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics