The right hemisphere superiority was observed for both positively and negatively valenced words. This better overall performance of the right hemisphere favours the so called ‘right hemisphere hypothesis’ (Borod et al., 1998) over the rival ‘valence hypothesis’, which proposes that the right hemisphere is specialised solely for negative emotions and that positive emotions are processed in the left cerebral hemisphere (Reuter-Lorenz & Davidson, 1981). Premkumar and collaborators (2011) go still further in the study of emotional processing by identifying activational differences between low and high schizotypy in the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, right superior frontal gyrus, and left ventral prefrontal

cortex when focusing on social rejection as a particular emotion. However, the present study had a couple www.selleckchem.com/screening/mapk-library.html of potential limitations that should be noted in generalising from its findings. First, selleckchem the dichotic listening paradigm used to test hemispheric lateralisation is not nearly as reliable as the Wada test (Woermann et al., 2003), which is taken to be the “gold standard” technique for language lateralisation. However, the Wada test (intracarotid amobarbital hemispheric sedation) has the disadvantage of its invasiveness and the possibility of clinical complications. Additionally, the SPQ range of the sample used in this study, although similar to previous

studies (e.g., Langdon & Coltheart, 2004), was relatively low compared to the maximum SPQ range indicated by Raine (1991). This highlights the importance of conducting further Fossariinae research in a more representative community sample. Taken as a whole, the current findings provide support for the notion that

schizotypal personality symptoms are distributed, to varying degrees, throughout the general population of healthy individuals. It can be confirmed that, at a non-clinical level, the presence of these symptoms do not give rise to the atypical lateralisation of language and emotion that is frequently observed within SPD and schizophrenia. Whilst atypical laterality is not a dominant feature of this population, disturbances in emotion recognition do manifest at the high end of the sub-clinical level of the schizotypal personality spectrum. This denotes that overlapping characteristics with the clinical sphere do exist. As the present study provided the first examination into the lateralisation of emotional prosody within this population, it may shed additional light on previous research by confirming that findings of impairments in emotion recognition abilities are unlikely to be a consequence of a right hemisphere abnormality. This work was supported by The Wellcome Trust (Ref: 089919). “
“Aversive events during pregnancy impair fetal development and produce short- and long-term alterations (Barbazanges et al., 1996, Burlet et al., 2005, Drago et al., 1999, Emack et al.