THE SEARCH FOR CEREBRAL DOMINANCE IN MONKEYS*

Abstract

Twelve monkeys with statistically significant and consistent manual preferences on three handedness tests were subjected to unilateral ablations in the association cortex. Eight received lesions in the foveal prestriate cortex, and four lesions in the dorsolateral frontal cortex; half the subjects in each group were operated on the dominant, and half on the nondominant hemisphere for handedness. The unilateral posterior preparations were significantly inferior to the control group of four unilateral frontals and five sham operated monkeys on three series of visual pattern discrimination problems. No evidence was obtained that lesions in the nondominant hemisphere. The results of this and four other experiments indicate that there is no cerebral dominance for problem-solving in monkeys. Recent research indicates that handedness in rhesus monkeys is only superficially similar to handedness in humans; thus, monkeys appear to lack cerebral dominance for handedness as well as for cognitive behavior.