1. Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Sign Language Perception: Deaf & Hearing Subjects with Deaf Parents Compared Jagoda Konarska, Maria Bak, Marina Kaneva & Alina Fesenko B. Söderfeldt, J. Rönnberg & J. Risberg

2. Overview I. Introduction II. Goals and Study III. Subjects IV. Method V. Results

3. Introduction  cerebral activation  deaf and hearing subjects  with deaf parents  deaf group depended more on spatial components

4. Goals and Study  find out similarities between signed and spoken language both seem to activate much the same regions in the brain more occipital activation in sign language  sign language seems to involve the right hemisphere?  study: compare sign language lateralization and localization between hearing and deaf children of deaf parents

5. Subjects  6 deaf subjects; 9 hearing subject all had deaf parents no psychiatric history Swedish sign language as mother tongue all were right-handed

6. Method  high resolution rCBF  Swedish novel was translated into Swedish sign language presented by a deaf man signing instruction: focus on story retell story  Activation was compared during sign language and rest

7. Results  both groups - a high bifrontal activation during rest Brain activation: deaf group:parieto-occipital lobe; hearing signers temporal lobe Conclusion: deafness leads to enhanced right hemisphere activation  enhanced right hemisphere parieto- occipital activation = an effect of a lack of auditory stimulation + early learning of a visual-spatial language

8. Bibliography  Söderfeldt, B., Rönnberg, J. & J. Risberg. 1994. Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Sign Language Perception: Deaf & Hearing Subjects with Deaf Parents Compared. In: Sign Language Studies, 199- 207.