Thesis--University of Florida. / Manuscript copy. Vita. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 29-30.

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From a neuropsychological perspective, hostile men have displayed dysregulation of right cerebral systems as evidenced through an exaggerated sympathetic stress response, with cardiovascular reactivity for blood pressure and heart rate. Altered right cerebral functioning, with hostility and anger, has been demonstrated within functional cerebral systems to include auditory (Demaree & Harrison, 1997), visual (Harrison & Gorelczenko, 1990; Herridge, Harrison, Mollet, & Shenal, 2003), somatosensory (Herridge, Harrison, & Demaree, 1997; Rhodes, Harrison, & Demaree, 2002), motor (Demaree, Higgins, Williamson, & Harrison, 2002) and premotor systems (Williamson & Harrison, 2003). Each of these studies has demonstrated cardiovascular reactivity (blood pressure and heart rates measures) concurrently with altered sensory or motor functional correlates of the right hemisphere. However, the neuropsychological mechanisms and functional regulation for the mobilization of glucose have not been examined. / Master of Science

The diploma work is engaged in specific problems of laterality at the age of younger pupilage children. It´s divided into to three parts - theoretical, practical and appendixes. Theoretical part deals with the laterality in relation to matureness of personality, historical context in society, diagnostic of laterality and its types. This work also inquires into influence of laterality on school successfulness. The diploma work contains the suggestion of possibility pupils work with several types of laterality in school use. The object of research in practical part of this work was to find out number of dexterous children and left-handed children and ambidexters in population of infant at school on the subject of laterality and its definition. The method of laterality test and observation were used to results processing. It was supplemented with questionnaire which was aimed to anamnesis data. The results of laterality tests are presented in the graphs. The conclusions of each part of research was analyzed from questionnaire results and also from results of laterality tests. Last part of diploma work, appendicces, contains working materials connected with laterality determination and proposals of grapho-motorical lists for dexterous and left-handed pupils with possibility of grapho-motorical difficulties.

Past research investigating stuttering has cited atypical cerebral lateralization in adults who stutter (AWS) during speech production. The purpose of this study was to measure cerebral activation in AWS as indicated by lip asymmetry. The study included five AWS (mean age = 26 years of age) and five adults who do not stutter (AWNS) (mean age = 25 years of age). The tasks included single-word productions, single-sentence readings and lip pursings. The peak electromyographic (EMG) amplitude was determined for the left upper, right upper, left lower and right lower lip quadrants around the mouth. Overall, EMG amplitudes were higher for the lower lip than the upper lip. Based on examination of peak EMG amplitude, significant differences were found between speaker groups. For both speech and non-speech tasks, the highest EMG amplitude for the AWS and AWNS groups were on the left lower and right lower sides of the mouth, respectively. The AWNS group showed strong correlations in EMG activity across the four lip sites (r>0.97), indicating an overall synchronous lip activity during speech and non-speech tasks. In contrast, the AWS group showed a strong correlation (r=0.97) only for the left upper and left lower lips while the other lip pairings were not strongly correlated (r<0.738) indicating otherwise reduced synchronous lip activity. While the small sample size suggests caution, clear differences in the pattern of lip EMG activity demonstrated in the present study provides evidence of differences between AWS and AWNS in the cerebral activation governing lip movement. The greater left lip activity observed in AWS was indicative of greater right hemisphere cerebral activation while increased right lip activity was indicative of greater left hemisphere participation in AWNS. The results of the present study provided support for the hypotheses of reversed lateralization for speech and non-speech processing and reduced coordination of speech musculature in AWS.

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Conceptual knowledge (or semantic knowledge) refers to our shared knowledge for words, objects, people and emotions. The anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) have been identified as a critical region for the representation of conceptual knowledge through convergent evidence from fMRI in healthy participants, cortical electrode implantation and damage-deficit correlations. With the involvement of the ATLs established, recent research has begun to focus on the functions of subregions of the ATLs - with particular interest surrounding the functions of the left and right ATLs. This thesis investigated three main research questions: (1) What are the functions of the left and right ATLs in semantic representation? (2) How does unilateral damage affect the semantic system and what mechanisms underlie the robustness of the system? (3) Do functional gradations exist within the ATLs? These questions were addressed using convergent methodologies including functional neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in healthy participants and behavioural and neuroimaging investigations in patients who have undergone unilateral ATL resection. To address the question of left vs. right ATL function, this thesis began by directly comparing the predictions of the different accounts of ATL function in a large-scale meta-analysis of the existing neuroimaging literature (Chapter 2) and in a large sample of patients who had undergone unilateral left or right ATL resection (Chapter 3). The overarching finding was that conceptual knowledge is underpinned by a primarily bilateral ATL system, whereby both the left and right ATLs are critical for normal semantic processing. Secondary to this bilateral representation, relative functional gradations were observed both between and within the ATLs. To address the second research question, Chapter 4 investigated the robustness of the semantic system to unilateral damage, specifically regions involved in the maintenance of conceptual knowledge were localised. Results showed that upregulation occurred within regions previously associated with semantic knowledge. The upregulation of activation after unilateral resection also mimicked the upregulation in control participants during more challenging semantic processing. Chapter 5 examined the behavioural relevance of upregulation in the contralateral ATL after unilateral perturbation using a novel TMS protocol in healthy participants. The findings observed here suggest that the bilateral ATL system is resistant to a degree of unilateral damage/perturbation because semantic representations are distributed between the hemispheres. Therefore, unilateral damage/disruption only results in a mild semantic impairment, as the undamaged/unperturbed hemisphere is available to compensate. Finally, Chapter 6 explored functional gradations within the ATLs by comparing responses in the ventral ATL to different conceptual categories, presented as visual and auditory inputs. The functional gradations observed here are proposed to emerge via differential structural and functional connectivity between the ATLs and sensory-motor and limbic cortices.