The cost of action miscues: hemispheric asymmetries

Adaptive behaviors require preparation and when necessary inhibition or alteration of actions. The right hemisphere has been posited to be dominant for preparatory motor activation. This experiment was designed to learn if there are hemispheric asymmetries in the control of altered plans of actions. Cues, both valid and invalid, which indicate the hand most likely to be called onto respond, as well as the imperative stimuli that indicate the actual response hand, were presented to either the right or left visual fields of 14 normal right handed participants. The delay after a miscue is dependent on the time taken to inhibit the premotor and motor systems of the incorrectly activated hemisphere, as well as to activate the motor systems of the opposite hemisphere, which might have been interhemispherically inhibited by this miscue. Analyses of reaction times revealed that miscues presented in left hemispace (right hemisphere) cost more time than those miscues presented in right hemispace (left hemisphere), suggesting that activation of the preparatory systems controlled by the right hemisphere may take longer to reverse than those controlled by the left hemisphere. This asymmetry may be related to asymmetries in the strength of hemispheric activation with contralateral inhibition.