NAME: WITELSON, SANDRA F., M.Sc. (Appl.), Ph.D., F.R.S.C. Professor DEPARTMENT: Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences E-MAIL ADDRESS : witelson@mcmaster.ca

1. My research program addresses the issue of anatomical correlates of cognitive functions and hemispheric asymmetry in the human brain in normal adults, in patients with cognitive disorders and in development. A resource is our unique brain bank of cognitively normal people.
   
   
2. We are currently investigating what anatomical microstructure might be the basis of the typical human left-sided representation of language; the biological basis of variation in intelligence and other cognitive abilities via postmortem and neuroimaging studies; sex differences in brain anatomy and their relationship to sex differences in behaviour and cognition.
   
   
3. The methods we use are postmortem anatomical measurement, histologic study, new quantitative stereologic approaches to obtain neuron number, various immunocytochemical techniques, in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), experimental neuropsychological tests and multivariate statistical analyses.

PUBLICATIONS

• Witelson SF, McCulloch PB. (1991) Premortem and postmortem measurement to study structure with function: A human brain collection. Schizophrenia Bulletin 17:583-591.
  
  
• Witelson SF. (1991) Neural sexual mosaicism: Sexual differentiation of the human temporo-parietal region for function asymmetry. Psychoneuroendocrinology 16:131-153.
  
  
• Witelson SF. (1992) Cognitive Neuroanatomy: A new era. Neurology 42:709-713.
  
  
• Witelson SF, Glezer II, Kigar DL (1995). Women have greater numerical density of neurons in posterior temporal cortex. J Neurosci 15:3418-3428.
  
  
• Witelson SF, Kigar DL, Harvey T. (1999) The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein. The Lancet 353:2149-2153.
  
  
• Scamvougeras A, Kigar DL, Jones D, Weinberger D, Witelson SF. (2003) Size of the human corpus callosum is genetically determined: an MRI study in mono and dizygotic twins. Neuroscience Letters 338:91-94.
  
  
• Witelson SF. (2003) Cerebral commissures. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
  
  
• Hall GBC, Witelson SF, Szechtman H, Nahmias C. (2004) Sex differences in functional activation patterns revealed by increased emotion processing demands. NeuroReport 15:219-223.

KEY WORDS

Human Brain Bank, Neuroanatomy, Histology, Stereology, Structure-Function Relationships, Localization of Language, Sexual Differentiation of the Brain, Aging, Intelligence, Hemispheric Specialization, Cognitive Disorders