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Correspondence:Correspondence published:
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Reply to Dr. McLachlan
- A Venneri, "MF Shanks, DP Carey" (25 September 2001)
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Preservation of golf skills in a case of severe left lobar frontotemporal degeneration
- Richard S McLachlan (25 September 2001)
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A Venneri University of Aberdeen/King's College Aberdeen UK, "MF Shanks, DP Carey"
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annalena{at}abdn.ac.uk A Venneri, et al.
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We thank Dr. McLachlan for his interest in our paper and his comments about hand preference and sporting activities. We can confirm that our patient was right handed, had a right club swinging preference and his profound progressive dysphasia with pronounced left frontotemporal atrophy supported left language lateralization. Dr. McLachlan observed that in sports, which require the use of one hand, like tennis, handedness seemed to respect cerebral language dominance. He also speculated that this might be less exclusively the case with bi-manual sports such as golf. Our reading of the factor analytic literature on side bias for manual activities, including sport, suggested that hand use patterns in bi-manual activities (like swinging an axe or using a bat) may load onto factors additional to those which have been related to uni-manual tasks like handwriting. [1] This research showed a marked increase in nondominant hand use in both right-handers (10% increase) and left-handers (26% increase) for bi-manual skills. These results have been confirmed by another study. [2] Therefore, it is possible that bi-manual activities are more plastic than uni-manual skilled tasks in the sense that they may be developed more flexibly and be less constrained by hemispheric lateralization, including lateralization for language. References: 1) Steenhuis RE, Bryden MP. Different dimensions of hand preference that relate to skilled and unskilled activities. Cortex 1989; 25: 289- 304. 2) Steenhuis RE, Bryden MP, Schwartz M, Lawson S. Reliability of hand preference items and factors. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 1990; 12: 921-930. |
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Richard S McLachlan Shaikh Khalifa Medical Center
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rsmcl{at}go.com Richard S McLachlan
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I was interested and amused by the article from Aberdeen, Scotland on preservation of golf skills despite a large left fronto-temporal brain lesion. [1] I assume the patient was right handed. The paper brought to mind the following observation. In contrast to sporting activities that require only one hand such as using a tennis racket, the preference for swinging a golf club (or baseball bat for that matter) in left-handers may be either left or right. However, I am not aware of any right handed person who has expressed a desire to swing a golf club left handed. Could the natural swing preference relate to cerebral language dominance which in left-handers can be either left hemisphere in 70% or atypical (right hemisphere or bilateral) in 30% assuming no early brain injury? [2] This compares to only 4-6% of right-handers who have atypical language dominance, usually bilateral. [3] References: 1) Venneri A, Shanks MF. Preservation of golf skills in a case of severe left lobar frontotemporal degeneration. Neurology 2001; 57 521-524. 2} Rasmussen T, Milner B. The role of early left-brain injury in determining lateralization of cerebral speech functions. Ann NY Acad Sci 1977; 299: 355–369. 3) Springer JA, Binder JR, Hammeke TA, et al. Language dominance in neurologically normal and epilepsy subjects: A functional MRI study. Brain 1999; 122: 2033-2046 |
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