Hemisphere asymmetry for imitation of hand and finger movements, Goldenberg's hypothesis reworked

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 44; no. 8; pp. 1496 - 1500
• Main Authors: Della Sala, Sergio, Faglioni, Pietro, Motto, Cristina, Spinnler, Hans
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 2006; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Biological and medical sciences; Chi-Square Distribution; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; Female; Finger apraxia; Fingers - innervation; Fingers - physiopathology; Functional Laterality - physiology; Gestures imitation; Hand; Hand apraxia; Hemisphere asymmetry; Humans; Ideomotor apraxia; Imitative Behavior - physiology; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Models, Psychological; Movement - physiology; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Perceptual Disorders - physiopathology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Hemisphere asymmetry; Gestures imitation; Hand apraxia; Ideomotor apraxia; Finger apraxia; Human; Nervous system diseases; Finger; Manual activity; Hand; Cerebral disorder; Asymmetry; Cerebral hemisphere; Central nervous system disease; Gesture; Imitation; Body movement; Neurological disorder; Motricity
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.11.011

Goldenberg and co-workers put forward the hypothesis that coding of hand gestures with respect to body parts depends upon the functioning of the left hemisphere while the right hemisphere would be involved in imitation of finger postures. They supported this claim with experimental evidence from lesion studies, however, they failed to back it up with functional neuroimaging data. To verify Goldenberg's hypothesis on hemisphere asymmetries for hand/finger postures imitation, the performance of 35 patients with left hemisphere lesion (L/pts), of 24 patients with right hemisphere lesion (R/pts) and that of 41 matched controls was assessed in two imitation tasks, respectively, taxing hand or finger postures. The data, adjusted for the performance of the controls and for the effect of age were analysed using a multivariate, nonparametric approach. The outcome partly supports Goldenberg and colleagues’ hypothesis: hand minus finger performance did differs between the R/pts and L/pts patients, even considering the pertinent hand–finger performances by control participants, however, in line with neuroimaging evidence, the left hemisphere's contribution is greater than that of the right for both finger and hand posture imitation.