Since research suggests that alcohol may affect brain structure differently in men and women, one might also expect to see gender differences in the neuropsychological consequences of alcoholism. One way of studying possible neuropsychological disparities between male and female alcoholics is to examine gender differences in the functioning of the brain’s two hemispheres (i.e., differences in their functional cerebral laterality patterns). This question may be important because structural differences in men’s and women’s brains may be one factor underlying gender differences in perceptual asymmetries and other neuropsychological responses to alcohol. Normally, in both men and women, the left and right sides of the brain have disproportionate (i.e., asymmetrical) abilities to process linguistic (e.g., letters, words, and phrases) and non-verbal (e.g., visuospatial and musical) information. The left hemisphere usually is more efficient than the right with linguistic signals, and the right hemisphere is more efficient than the left for nonverbal signals. Scientists can study differences in hemispheric asymmetries using procedures called laterality tasks, which are sensitive to left and right hemisphere functioning. Figure 4 illustrates the neuroanatomy of human laterality (for a detailed description of laterality tasks, see Oscar-Berman 1992).
