Individual Differences in Hemispheric Specialization

This collection grew out of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in October in Maratea, Italy. The introduction and later chapters set out its goals and contributions in more detail. Three of the chapters come from scholars who were invited to the workshop but could not attend.

The volume looks at how the left and right halves of the human brain take on different roles. The left hemisphere is associated with verbal abilities and the right with visuospatial ones, a pattern once known as cerebral dominance. Contributors explore how this specialization varies between individuals, with particular attention to gender and handedness.

The chapters compare the main ways of measuring hemispheric specialization, including behavioral and perceptual tests, clinical and neurological evidence, electrophysiological recordings, and real-time methods for tracking the brain's functional orientation. They also examine the statistical concepts used to judge lateralization and consider how these methods apply to psychopathology. The book is presented as a critical overview rather than an exhaustive survey.