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Nielsen Brain & Behavior Lab

Estimating Hemispheric Specialization in Neurotypical Adults: A Replication of Wang et al. (2014)

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Introduction
Hypothesis
Data
Methods
Results
Limitations
Acknowledgements

While the two hemispheres of the brain appear symmetrical at first glance, a careful quantitative approach has revealed meaningful differences between the two hemispheres (see Toga & Thompson, 2001 for review). Previously, Wang et al. (2014) found greater left hemisphere specialization in the front-parietal control and default networks as well as greater right hemisphere specialization in the attention and frontoparietal control networks using a seven-network parcellation scheme. Given recent evidence that a group-level approach can obscure individual variation (Lynch et al., 2020; Salvo et al., 2021), we sought to take an individualized approach to estimating specialization while using a higher-resolution parcellation scheme.

We hypothesized that areas associated with language and visuospatial attention would show the greatest left and right specialization, respectively.

  • HCP dataset: 222 individuals ages 22-36+
  • Four 15-minute resting-state scans per individual
  • Motion thresholds: FD .2 and DVARS 50
  • Reliability of AI and SAI measures
  • Language task contrast shows poor alignment with an established language atlas (Lipkin et al., 2022)

Data were provided by the Human Connectome Project, WU-Minn Consortium (Principle Investigators: David Van Essen and Kamil Ugurbil; 1U54MH091657) funded by the 16 NIH Institutes and Centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research; and by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University.