Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
Biological Personality Psychology, Georg-August-University Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2023 Sep 15;13(1):15348. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-42563-7.
The development of handedness and other form of functional asymmetries is not yet understood in its critical determinants. Early life factors (e.g., birth weight, birth order) have been discussed to contribute to individual manifestations of functional asymmetries. However, large-scale data such as the UK Biobank suggest that the variance in handedness that is explained by early life factors is minimal. Additionally, atypical handedness has been linked to clinical outcomes such as neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Against the background of this triad, the current study investigated associations between different forms of functional asymmetries and (a) early life factors as well as (b) clinical outcomes. Functional asymmetries were determined by means of a deep phenotyping approach which notably extends previous work. In our final sample of N = 598 healthy participants, the different variables were tested for associations by means of linear regression models and group comparisons (i.e., ANOVAs and Chi-squared tests). Confirming previous findings from larger cohorts with shallow phenotyping, we found that birth factors do not explain a substantial amount of variance in functional asymmetries. Likewise, functional asymmetries did not seem to have comprehensive predictive power concerning clinical outcomes in our healthy participants. Future studies may further investigate postulated relations in healthy and clinical samples while acknowledging deep phenotyping of laterality.
用手习惯和其他形式的功能不对称的发展，其关键决定因素尚不清楚。早期生活因素（例如，出生体重、出生顺序）已被讨论为导致功能不对称个体表现的原因。然而，英国生物库（UK Biobank）等大型数据集表明，由早期生活因素解释的用手习惯的差异极小。此外，非典型用手习惯与神经发育和精神障碍等临床结果有关。在这三联体的背景下，本研究调查了不同形式的功能不对称与（a）早期生活因素以及（b）临床结果之间的关联。通过一种深度表型分析方法来确定功能不对称，该方法显著扩展了以前的工作。在我们的最终样本 598 名健康参与者中，通过线性回归模型和组比较（即方差分析和卡方检验）来测试不同变量之间的关联。证实了以前在具有浅层表型的更大队列中得出的发现，我们发现出生因素并不能解释功能不对称中大量的差异。同样，在我们的健康参与者中，功能不对称似乎对临床结果没有全面的预测能力。未来的研究可能会在健康和临床样本中进一步调查假定的关系，同时承认对偏侧性的深度表型分析。
