Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.
Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Dev Sci. 2021 Jul;24(4):e13067. doi: 10.1111/desc.13067. Epub 2020 Dec 13.
The neural representation of visual-spatial functions has traditionally been ascribed to the right hemisphere, but little is known about these representations in children, including whether and how lateralization of function changes over the course of development. Some studies suggest bilateral activation early in life that develops toward right-lateralization in adulthood, while others find evidence of right-hemispheric dominance in both children and adults. We used a complex visual-spatial construction task to examine the nature of lateralization and its developmental time course in children ages 5-11 years. Participants were shown two puzzle pieces and were asked whether the pieces could fit together to make a square; responses required either mental translation of the pieces (Translation condition) or both mental translation and rotation of the pieces (Rotation condition). Both conditions were compared to a matched Luminance control condition that was similar in terms of visual content and difficulty but required no spatial analysis. Group and single-subject analyses revealed that the Rotation and Translation conditions elicited strongly bilateral activation in the same parietal and occipital locations as have been previously found for adults. These findings show that visual-spatial construction consistently elicits robust bilateral activation from age 5 through adulthood. This challenges the idea that spatial functions are all right-lateralized, either during early development or in adulthood. More generally, these findings provide insights into the developmental course of lateralization across different spatial skills and how this may be influenced by the computational requirements of the particular functions involved.
视觉空间功能的神经表现传统上归因于右半球，但对于儿童的这些表现知之甚少，包括功能是否以及如何随着发育过程而发生偏侧化。一些研究表明，生命早期存在双侧激活，随后在成年期向右侧化发展，而另一些研究则在儿童和成人中都发现了右侧优势的证据。我们使用复杂的视觉空间构建任务来研究儿童 5-11 岁时的偏侧化及其发展时间过程。参与者被展示了两个拼图块，并被问及这些拼图块是否可以组合成一个正方形；回答需要拼图块的心理翻译（翻译条件）或拼图块的心理翻译和旋转（旋转条件）。这两种情况都与亮度控制条件进行了比较，亮度控制条件在视觉内容和难度方面相似，但不需要空间分析。组和单个体分析表明，旋转和翻译条件在与先前为成年人发现的相同顶叶和枕叶位置引起强烈的双侧激活。这些发现表明，从 5 岁到成年，视觉空间构建始终会引起强烈的双侧激活。这挑战了空间功能在早期发育或成年期都完全偏侧化的观点。更一般地说，这些发现提供了对不同空间技能的偏侧化发展过程的深入了解，以及这如何受到特定功能的计算要求的影响。
