Definition
Cerebral asymmetries refer to structural and functional differences between the two brain hemispheres.
Introduction
In the nineteenth century, Paul Broca examined the brain of a diseased patient who had been unable to produce articulate language following a unilateral stroke. The patient had an extensive lesion in the left frontal lobe, which led Broca to conclude that language is localized in the left hemisphere. A few years later, Karl Wernicke described a patient unable to comprehend language, and again the impairment was caused by a left hemisphere lesion, this time in the temporal lobe. The left hemisphere has been considered to be dominant for language although the right retains some rudimentary linguistic capabilities. These discoveries led to the notion of cerebral asymmetry. That is, certain cognitive functions are performed more efficiently in one hemisphere than the other.
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Haberling, I. (2017). Cerebral Asymmetries. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_737-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_737-1
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