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Functional connectivity of the human face network exhibits right hemispheric lateralization from infancy to adulthood.

ABSTRACT: Adults typically exhibit right hemispheric dominance in the processing of faces. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated age-dependent changes in face processing lateralization from infancy to adulthood (1-48 years old; N = 194). We co-registered anatomical and resting state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults into a common space and examined functional connectivity across the face, as well as place, and object-selective regions identified in adults. As expected, functional connectivity between core face-selective regions was stronger in the right compared to the left hemisphere in adults. Most importantly, the same lateralization was evident in all other age groups (infants, children, adolescents) and appeared only in face-selective regions, and not in place or object-selective regions. These findings suggest that the physiological development of face-selective brain areas may differ from that of object and place-selective areas. Specifically, the functional connectivity of the core-face selective regions exhibits rightward lateralization from infancy, years before these areas develop mature face-selective responses.

SUBMITTER: Lesinger K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10682179 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Functional connectivity of the human face network exhibits right hemispheric lateralization from infancy to adulthood.

Lesinger Keren K Rosenthal Gideon G Pierce Karen K Courchesne Eric E Dinstein Ilan I Avidan Galia G

Scientific reports 20231127 1

Adults typically exhibit right hemispheric dominance in the processing of faces. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated age-dependent changes in face processing lateralization from infancy to adulthood (1-48 years old; N = 194). We co-registered anatomical and resting state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults into a common space and examined functional connectivity across the face, as well as place, and object-selective region ...[more]

PMID: 38012206

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Project description:It is well-established that visuospatial attention is mainly lateralized to the right hemisphere, whereas language production is mainly left-lateralized. However, there is a significant controversy regarding how these two kinds of lateralization interact with each other. The present research used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine whether visuospatial attention is indeed right-lateralized, whereas language production is left-lateralized, and more importantly, whether the extent of lateralization in the visuospatial task is correlated with that in the task involving language. Specifically, fifty-two healthy right-handed participants participated in this study. Multiple-channel fNIRS technique was utilized to record the cerebral hemodynamic changes when participants were engaged in naming objects depicted in pictures (the picture naming task) or judging whether a presented line was bisected correctly (the landmark task). The degree of hemispheric lateralization was quantified according to the activation difference between the left and right hemispheres. We found that the picture-naming task predominantly activated the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the left hemisphere. In contrast, the landmark task predominantly activated the inferior parietal sulcus (IPS) and superior parietal lobule (SPL) of the right hemisphere. The quantitative calculation of the laterality index also showed a left-lateralized distribution for the picture-naming task and a right-lateralized distribution for the landmark task. Intriguingly, the correlation analysis revealed no significant correlation between the laterality indices of these two tasks. Our findings support the independent hypothesis, suggesting that different cognitive tasks may engender lateralized processing in the brain, but these lateralized activities may be independent of each other. Meanwhile, we stress the importance of handedness in understanding the relationship between functional asymmetries. Methodologically, we demonstrated the effectiveness of using the multichannel fNIRS technique to investigate the hemispheric specialization of different cognitive tasks and their lateralization relations between different tasks. Our findings and methods may have important implications for future research to explore lateralization-related issues in individuals with neural pathologies.

Project description:Background and purposeAlthough most studies on epilepsy have focused on the epileptogenic zone, epilepsy is a system-level disease characterized by aberrant neuronal synchronization among groups of neurons. Increasingly, studies have indicated that mesial temporal lobe epilepsy may be a network-level disease; however, few investigations have examined resting-state functional connectivity of the entire brain, particularly in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and hippocampal sclerosis. This study primarily investigated whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity abnormality in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and right hippocampal sclerosis during the interictal period.Materials and methodsWe investigated resting-state functional connectivity of 21 patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with right hippocampal sclerosis and 21 neurologically healthy controls. A multivariate pattern analysis was used to identify the functional connections that most clearly differentiated patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with right hippocampal sclerosis from controls.ResultsDiscriminative analysis of functional connections indicated that the patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with right hippocampal sclerosis exhibited decreased resting-state functional connectivity within the right hemisphere and increased resting-state functional connectivity within the left hemisphere. Resting-state network analysis suggested that the internetwork connections typically obey the hemispheric lateralization trend and most of the functional connections that disturb the lateralization trend are the intranetwork ones.ConclusionsThe current findings suggest that weakening of the resting-state functional connectivity associated with the right hemisphere appears to strengthen resting-state functional connectivity on the contralateral side, which may be related to the seizure-induced damage and underlying compensatory mechanisms. Resting-state network-based analysis indicated that the compensatory mechanism among different resting-state networks may disturb the hemispheric lateralization.

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Functional connectivity of the human face network exhibits right hemispheric lateralization from infancy to adulthood.

Publications

Functional connectivity of the human face network exhibits right hemispheric lateralization from infancy to adulthood.

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