[Functional hemispheric asymmetry in children with hypersynchronous activity in the EEG. A tachistoscopic study using...

24 patients of a child psychiatric clinic with focal epileptiform activity located in different brain areas were tested with tachistoscopically presented letter and word stimuli to examine functional hemisphere asymmetry. Children with epilepsy were excluded. No differences were found concerning the lateralisation of the examined functions between the clinical groups and a matched pair nonclinical control group. All children showed an advantage of the left hemisphere in processing the presented visuo-linguistic stimuli. Children with bihemispheric epileptiform discharges showed superior performance on all tasks in contrast to children with left hemispheric discharges and the control group. Results were discussed in the theoretical framework of raised cortical vigilance in these children. Asymmetric hemispheric functions focal epileptiform discharges tachistoscopic study letter/word recognition test.