title: Developmental aspects of language lateralization in delta, theta, alpha and beta EEG bands.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: University of Padova, Department of General Psychology, 35131 Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Spironelli
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Angrilli
mesh_terms: 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