ArticleBrain and behavior2025
Does the Brain Care Which Direction We Read? A Cross-Cultural tDCS Study on Functional Lateralization of Number Processing.
Article in Brain and behavior, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThe potential influence of culture on functional lateralization was rarely investigated, yet it may be an important factor in our understanding of the human brain. In numerical processing, evidence was found for differential directional preferences of space-number associations in cultures with opposite reading direction systems. This may affect finger-counting preferences like the starting hand, which in turn have previously been associated with differing lateralization. Such studies raise the question of whether number culture may also play a distinct role in the lateralization of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), the hallmark region of numerical magnitude processing.
methodIn our preregistered cross-cultural study, we applied anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left versus right IPS to investigate the effect of stimulation as compared to sham in Iranians (with right-to-left reading system) and Germans (with left-to-right reading system). FINDING: Results indicated no overall effect of stimulation; however, exploratory analyses revealed that tDCS over the left and right IPS facilitated number processing in Iranians compared to Germans after controlling for training effects. Finger-counting direction was not found to be decisive for this effect.
conclusionAt the end, number processing might be bilaterally represented in the IPS; however, our exploratory analyses emphasize the need for further investigation on the potential role of culture in the representations of numbers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.