The pioneer works of Marc Dax and Paul Broca on the association between left hemisphere injuries and speech impairments, revealed one of the most intriguing properties of the brain – asymmetry. Since then, lateralized features have been observed in virtually all phylogenetic branches, suggesting evolutionary conservation, although its adaptive role is still not clear. In humans, the field remains greatly shaped by early observations on language, but the advent of brain imaging revealed that functional and structural laterality is not only widespread, extending to memory, decision-making and emotion, but also that it is plastic. In this review, we systematize information regarding structural and functional hemispheric asymmetries of the healthy brain and their associations with cognition and behavior. We briefly explore evolutionary theories and the pathways for asymmetry development, but mostly we focus on central nervous system asymmetries of the adult human, bridging towards the laboratory rodent for mechanistic explanations.

马克·戴克斯（Marc Dax）和保罗·布罗卡（Paul Broca）关于左半球损伤与言语障碍之间联系的开创性著作，揭示了大脑最令人着迷的特性之一-不对称。从那时起，几乎在所有系统发育分支中都观察到侧向化特征，这表明进化保守，尽管其适应性作用仍不清楚。在人类中，该领域仍然受到早期对语言的观察的影响，但是大脑成像的出现表明，功能和结构方面的偏见不仅广泛存在，延伸到记忆，决策和情感上，而且是可塑性的。在这篇综述中，我们将有关健康大脑的结构和功能半球不对称及其与认知和行为的关联的信息系统化。