David F. Abbott1, 2, Susan M. Palmer3, Essie Low3, Graeme D. Jackson1, 2, Leeanne M. Carey3, 4
1Brain Research Institute, Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; 2Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; 3National Stroke Research Institute, Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; 4LaTrobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
We used fMRI to explore the relative lateralisation of brain activity associated with controlled tactile stimulation of the fingertips of the left or right hand, in thirteen healthy subjects. An adaptive and largely threshold independent method of objectively determining laterality was adapted for this study to permit statistical comparison of the laterality of activity associated with dominant-hand compared to laterality of activity associated with non-dominant-hand stimuli. We found that subjects are more strongly lateralised in secondary somatosensory cortex for sensory stimuli of their dominant right-hand than for similar stimuli applied to their non-dominant left hand.
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