Yi,
just a short feedback on your question which I have not seen any other
replies to :
> I am curious about whether it is appropriate to include both-handed participant in fMRI study.
The main thing to decide beforehand (pun intended ;) is, is handedness
associated with any of the functions you are interested in. If so, then
using only right-handers is a common approach, but it is by no means a
principle that must not be violated. A lot of people will take this
approach, but it is also (or additionally) usually fine to statistically
account for this "inhomogeneity" by, for example, including the
handedness score from an inventory (such es the EHI, which takes about 1
minute to complete) as a covariate into the group analyses (as you would
do for, e.g., gender or age). This way, even if the "both-hander"
behaves differently, this additional variance should be captured. There
are always limitations to such an approach but this is a rather
commonly-used solution. If you still have doubts, you can check how much
of the variance is explained by handedness by running an F-test on this
covariate.
Hope this helps,
Marko
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____________________________________________________
PD Dr. med. Marko Wilke
Facharzt für Kinder- und Jugendmedizin
Leiter, Experimentelle Pädiatrische Neurobildgebung
Universitäts-Kinderklinik
Abt. III (Neuropädiatrie)
Marko Wilke, MD, PhD
Pediatrician
Head, Experimental Pediatric Neuroimaging
University Children's Hospital
Dept. III (Pediatric Neurology)
Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 1
D - 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Tel. +49 7071 29-83416
Fax +49 7071 29-5473
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http://www.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/kinder/epn/
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