Developmental aspects of language lateralization in delta, theta, alpha and beta EEG bands.
This study aimed to clarify the functional role of several EEG bands across age by analyzing language hemispheric lateralization in three linguistic tasks. Twenty-eight children, 22 young adults and 20 middle-aged participants were administered the same sample of written words and normalized amplitudes of δ, ϑ, α and β bands were analyzed. Only young adults showed rightwards lateralization in δ frequency band. Task-dependent right-lateralization marked adults' ϑ and α distributions, whereas only linguistic vs. non-linguistic differences were found in children. Concerning the high-beta band, all groups showed left-lateralized linguistic effects. In adults slow rhythms represent indices of active inhibition of task-irrelevant regions, but in children they marked incomplete automated linguistic processing. The high-beta band revealed task-relevant left hemisphere linguistic activity in all groups, therefore representing the most reliable EEG marker of language hemispheric dominance in children and adults.
Spironelli
Chiara
C
University of Padova, Department of General Psychology, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Angrilli
Alessandro
A
D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011932:Reading