The effect of the functional asymmetry of the brain on face morphometry in the university students of mathematics and painting department.

Background: The face is a complicated structure configurations of which are originated and components integrated during the developmental stages. Almost the whole of face is formed by neural crest cells migrating from the edge of the cranial neural folds to the pharyngeal arcus. Brain is an asymmetric organ both functionally and anatomically. While the left hemisphere is dominant in processing the verbal, mathematical and logical information, the right hemisphere is dominant in processing the perceptual, visible, spatial and artistic information. The functional differences in the left and right brain hemispheres might also cause differences in facial regions developing from the same centres as telencephalon during embryonic period. Therefore; we aimed to perform linear anthropometric measurements and determine whether functional asymmetry of brain creates any change in facial linear measurements, on the faces of students of painting and mathematics departments whose skills are different from each other.

Materials And Methods: This study was performed on 212 students. A total numer of 22 measurements from 17 anthropometric points for each student were done. Measurements were carried out between November 2011 and February 2012.

Results: Our findings revealed that there were statistically significant differences between two student groups in the face width, intercanthal distance, mandibular width, nose width, upper lip height and philtrum length. The comparison of genders revealed that there were statistically significant differences between all measured parameters. In addition, all students from both departments had euryprosopic face type when face type points were compared.

Conclusions: Those differences might be related to the functional asymmetry of brain. Therefore it could be suggested that the functional asymmetry of brain could cause an asymmetry in the face as well as in the linear anthropometric measurements.