Left-Handers Are Less Lateralized Than Right-Handers for Both Left and Right Hemispheric Functions

Many neuroscientific techniques have revealed that more left- than right-handers will have unusual cerebral asymmetries for language. After the original emphasis on frequency in the aphasia and epilepsy literatures, most neuropsychology, and neuroimaging efforts rely on estimates of central tendency to compare these two handedness groups on any given measure of asymmetry. The inevitable reduction in mean lateralization in the left-handed group is often postulated as being due to reversed asymmetry in a small subset of them, but it could also be due to a reduced asymmetry in many of the left-handers. These two possibilities have hugely different theoretical interpretations. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging localizer paradigms, we matched left- and right-handers for hemispheric dominance across four functions (verbal fluency, face perception, body perception, and scene perception). We then compared the degree of dominance between the two handedness groups for each of these four measures, conducting t-tests on the mean laterality indices. The results demonstrate that left-handers with typical cerebral asymmetries are less lateralized for language, faces, and bodies than their right-handed counterparts. These results are difficult to reconcile with current theories of language asymmetry or of handedness.

A Multivariate Approach to Determine the Dimensionality of Human Facial Asymmetry

Many studies have suggested that developmental instability (DI) could lead to asymmetric development, otherwise known as fluctuating asymmetry (FA). Several attempts to unravel the biological meaning of FA have been made, yet the main step in estimating FA is to remove the effects of directional asymmetry (DA), which is defined as the average bilateral asymmetry at the population level. Here, we demonstrate in a multivariate context that the conventional method of DA correction does not adequately compensate for the effects of DA in other dimensions of asymmetry. This appears to be due to the presence of between-individual variation along the DA dimension. Consequently, we propose to decompose asymmetry into its different orthogonal dimensions, where we introduce a new measure of asymmetry, namely fluctuating directional asymmetry (F-DA). This measure describes individual variation in the dimension of DA, and can be used to adequately correct the asymmetry measurements for the presence of DA. We provide evidence that this measure can be useful in disentangling the different dimensions of asymmetry, and further studies on this measure can provide valuable insight into the underlying biological processes leading to these different asymmetry dimensions.

The Awkarin Index: a Measure of Asymmetry Between a Scholar’s Social Media Profile and Publication

I propose the ‘Awkarin Index’ (Λ-index), a measure of asymmetry between a scholar’s social media profile and publication record based on the direct comparison of numbers of citations and social media followers. It was because in the era of social media there are now many different ways that a scholar can build their public profile; the publication of high-quality scientific papers being just one. While social media is a valuable tool for outreach and the sharing of ideas, there is a danger that this form of communication is gaining too high a value and that we are losing sight of key metrics of scientific value, such as citation indices. This work proposes the ‘Awkarin Index’ (Λ-index) to help quantify this case.

METHOD FOR ASSESSING THE SYMMETRY OF OBJECTS ON DIGITAL BINARY IMAGES BASED ON FOURIER DESCRIPTOR

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In this paper we solve the problem of finding the symmetry axis of the object in a digital binary image. A new axial symmetry criterion is formulated for a connected discrete object. The problem of determining the symmetry measure and finding the symmetry axes arises in a variety of applications. In discrete images, exact symmetry is possible only in special cases. The disadvantage of the existing methods solving this problem is the high computational complexity. To improve computational efficiency, it is proposed to use the so-called Fourier descriptor. A new method for estimating the asymmetry of a discrete silhouette is proposed. The described algorithm for calculating the measure of asymmetry and determining the axis of symmetry is quadratic by the number of contour points. Methods for reducing the volume of calculations using a convex hull and taking into account the values of the modules of Fourier coefficients are proposed. Computational experiments are conducted with silhouettes of aircraft extracted from earth remote sensing images. The reliability of the described solution is established.</p>

O przestrzennym zróżnicowaniu struktur wieku ludności w Polsce, 1991-2011

The purpose of this article is description of demographic ageing using two methods: resemblance of structures and the measure of asymmetry for the years 1991, 2001 and 2011, for population of women and men separately and comparing results. Voivod ships with population ageing similarly rarely have formed spatially close areas, rather they formed clusters in various parts of the country. With passing time age structures by voivod ship started to resemble regressive type structure, but their dynamics was independent from the structure recorded in 1990. Population of majority of voivod ships located in the Eastern part of the country was older than population of Western voivod ships. Similarly, population of women was older than population of men. The comparative analysis of result leads to similar conclusions.