Absence of hemispheric dominance for mental rotation ability: a transcranial Doppler study

Cortex. 2000 Jun;36(3):415-25. doi: 10.1016/s0010-9452(08)70850-5.

Abstract

Mean blood flow velocity (MFV) of the middle cerebral arteries was monitored in 19 healthy, adult, right-handed subjects during the resting phase and the execution of a series of neuropsychological tests: two right/left discrimination tasks, two mental rotation paradigms (the Ratcliff's test and a cube comparison test) and a phonemic fluency task, which was utilised as an internal control. In the group as a whole, the Ratcliff's test was associated with a significant bilateral increase in MFV versus both the resting state (right: p < .000001, left: p < .000001) and right/left discrimination tasks (task 1: right: p = .003, left: p = .005; task 2: right: p = .001, left: p = .001). The cube comparison in turn produced a significant increase in MFV versus both the baseline conditions (right: p < .000001, left: p < .000001) and the Ratcliff's test (right: p = .01, left: p = .002). As expected, the fluency task was associated with a significant asymmetric increase in cerebral perfusion (left > right: p = .0001). Increasing task difficulty (right/left discrimination < Ratcliffs test < cube comparison) was paralleled by a roughly proportional rise in MFV values (right: r = .424, p < .01; left: r = .331, p = .01). In conclusion, we were able to demonstrate that (1) in addition to the amount of MFV variation due to right/left discrimination (when required), mental rotation per se causes a bihemispheric activation irrespective of the experimental paradigm; (2) the MFV variation is proportional to the difficulty of the tasks.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Blood Flow Velocity / physiology
  • Brain / blood supply*
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Cognition / physiology*
  • Echoencephalography / methods
  • Female
  • Functional Laterality / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Space Perception / physiology*
  • Ultrasonography, Doppler, Transcranial / methods*