Abstract
Seventeen children with clinical evidences of preterm birth and spastic diplegia (SD) were studied about the relationship between clinical severity and laterality of cerebral function. The result showed the patients with the left-handed SD were more serious than those with the right-handed in their intelligence and activity of daily living. As the severity increased, motor difficulty was also observed at upper limbs, and especially spasticity was detected at the right hand. The dichotic listening test showed the right ear dominace only in the patients with the right-handed SD. MRI examinationw as performedi n 10 cases, a nd periventricular leukomalasia (PVL) was detected in all cases. There was few correlation between PVL and clinical laterality. We speculated that right-hand spasticity which was seen in severe cases was due to the fragility of periventriculars tructure in the left hemisphere
