Cerebral Lateralization and Functionality
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Many studies have been conducted in cerebral lateralization revealing different functionalities of the left and right hemispheres. Cerebral lateralization is the process which the two hemispheres of the brain increasingly specialized in particular tasks. There are four methods of cerebral lateralization to study the functions of the right and left hemisphere of the brain. These methods include the sodium amytal test, the dichotic listing test, and functional brain imaging. The forth method of cerebral lateralization is comparing the effects of unilateral left and right hemisphere brain lesions. The sodium amytal test is a language lateralization that is given to patients before neurosurgery. During this test the patient is injected with a small amount of sodium amytal into the carotid artery on one side of the neck. The injection anesthetizes the hemisphere on that side for a few minutes, thus allowing the capacities of the other hemisphere to be assessed (Pinel, 2011). The patients are then asked to recite things such as numbers or letters to see if they still have the ability to speak. The dichotic listening test is a noninvasive test. This test can also be given to health people. In the standard dichotic listening test, three pairs of spoken numbers are presented through earphones; the numbers of each pair are presented simultaneously, one to each ear (Pinel, 2011). Then the individual is asked to repeat the numbers that they heard.
In functional brain imaging, an individual reads or performs some kind of activity and the brain is examined by positron emission tomography or functional magnetic resonance imaging. The fourth method of studying cerebral lateralization of functioning is comparing the effects of unilateral left and right hemisphere brain lesions. This method studies where the lesions are