Bilateral parietal contributions to spatial language.

It is commonly held that language is largely lateralized to the left hemisphere in most individuals, whereas spatial processing is associated with right hemisphere regions. In recent years, a number of neuroimaging studies have yielded conflicting results regarding the role of language and spatial processing areas in processing language about space (e.g.

Neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.

A number of studies have investigated differences in neural correlates of abstract and concrete concepts with disagreement across results. A quantitative, coordinate-based meta-analysis combined data from 303 participants across 19 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) studies to identify the differences in neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts. Studies that reported peak activations in standard space in contrast of abstract > concrete or concrete > abstract concepts at a whole brain level in healthy adults were included in this meta-analysis.

Lateralized frontal activity elicited by attention-directing visual and auditory cues.

In event-related potential studies of voluntary spatial attention, lateralized activity observed over anterior scalp sites prior to an impending target has been interpreted as the activity of a supramodal attentional control mechanism in the frontal lobes. However, variability in the scalp topography and presence of this activity across studies suggests that multiple neural generators contribute to the lateralized activity recorded at the scalp. Using distributed source modeling we found two distinct frontal lobe sources following attention-directing cues, one dependent on the sensory modality of the eliciting stimulus and one dependent on the response requirements of the task.