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Background and Aim: Difficulties in sidedness of autistic students and their defected language and communication function can be in relationship with their educational state. This research was designed to investigate the possible relationship among sidedness, communicative function and educational state in autistic students. 

Materials and Methods: This is a described-analytic research and a kind of cross sectional and comparative one. For these purpose 40 autistic students with age average 10 years old and 8 months (SD=±2.5) were chosen. Communicative function questionnaire were completed by all subjects‘parents. We used observation check list to examine handedness, footedness, and dominant eye and ear. Using of T-test, covariance analysis data were analyzed.

Results :Data analysis indicated that there is not significant statistically difference  between communicative function and educational state(p<0.05),but participants with weak educational state less tend to definite sidedness preference-in hand and foot not in eye and ear (p>0.05).

Conclusion: These findings reveal that stability of sidedness, which obtains with interventions rehabilitation in autistic students, can perform important role in high language skills and appropriate educational state for them.

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Background and Aim: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a novel technique for inhibition or excitation of brain cortical area. Dichotic listening test is a simple instrument to determine dominant ear and brain hemisphere for processing of verbal stimuli. This study aimed to determine changes in right ear advantage(REA), after applying inhibitory rTMS protocol on left Broca area.

 

Materials and Methods: In this descriptive - cross-sectional study, we compared the performances of 14 right handed normal adult Persian speakers with normal auditory and no history of psychiatric or neurological disorders. TMS was applied at 1 Hz with 90% motor threshold, for 10 minutes (600 pulses) on left Broca's area. The right ear advantage index was assessed pre and post rTMS using dichotic listening test.

  

Results: Finding of the present study showed no significant difference on right ear advantage index pre and post rTMS using paired t-test.

 

Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, it can be concluded that the use of inhibitory rTMS protocol on the left Broca area , has no effect for shifting in the right ear advantage. For interpretation of the results, it could be stated that it may be the protocol was used in this study isn't sufficient enough to inhibit left hemisphere for linguistic processing. Another reason could be the lack of sufficient sensitivity of Dichotic Listening test to show changes in hemisphere function after TMS. However, to provide clearer description, using functional brain imaging techniques and TMS together could be helpful.

 

Key words: Trancranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Lateralization, REA, Linguistic processing, Dichotic listening