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

24 patients of a child psychiatric clinic with focal epileptiform activity located in different brain areas were tested with a dichotic listening procedure to examine functional hemispheric 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 non-clinical control group. Clinical groups as well as the control group showed a right-ear-effect (REE), i.e. a superior functioning of the left hemisphere in processing the presented stimuli. However, children with epileptiform discharges in the left hemisphere showed inferior functioning in the dichotic listening test on both ears in contrast to children with bi-hemispheric discharges and the control group. Results were discussed in the theoretical framework of malfunctions of auditory short time memory.