Phrase comprehension after brain damage

1982 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Sloan Berndt ◽  
Alfonso Caramazza

ABSTRACTComprehension of six dimensional adjectives was found to be intact in groups of left hemisphere-damaged, right hemisphere-damaged and neurologically normal patients. Phrases with those adjectives were interpreted quite differently by left hemisphere-damaged patients than by the other two groups, and a subgroup of left-damaged patients appeared to be responsible for that group's deviant responses to phrases such as slightly bigger. All patients in the left-damaged group had some difficulty with negative phrases such as not big, however. Patients with right hemisphere-damage had difficulty interpreting only negative phrases with small. Results are interpreted with reference to Luria's discussion of semantic aphasia, and with regard to recent findings concerning the role of the right hemisphere in language comprehension.

1995 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Korkman ◽  
Lennart von Wendt

AbstractThe study aimed at investigating lateralization effects and signs of transfer and crowding in children with congenital lateralized brain damage with the aid of a dichotic listening test, a chimeric test, and verbal and nonverbal neuropsychological tests. Thirty-three children with spastic hemiplegia and 86 control children (age 5.0–12.0 yr) were assessed. Children with left-hemisphere damage (n = 17) were found to have a pathological left-ear advantage for verbal material, and children with right-hemisphere damage (n = 16) were found to have a pathological right visual half-field advantage for visual material. Children with left-hemisphere damage and a left-ear advantage on the dichotic test were also found to have a right visual half-field advantage on the chimeric test, which was regarded as a sign of reversed dominance. No verbal or nonverbal differences emerged between the left-hemisphere and the right-hemisphere damage groups, nor did differences emerge when the children were reclassified by considering children with left-hemisphere damage and signs of reversed dominance as having damage to the nondominant hemisphere. It was concluded that although lateralized brain damage may alter the dominance for verbal and visual functions, there is still considerable inter-individual variability with respect to inter- and intrahemispheric neural adjustment to damage. The dichotic and the chimeric tests did not indicate the presence of brain damage accurately, but they indicated the lateralization of damage in children with stated abnormality with a high degree (91.3%) of accuracy. (JINS, 1995, I, 261–270.)


2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1740) ◽  
pp. 20170044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Semenza ◽  
Silvia Benavides-Varela

The role of the left hemisphere in calculation has been unequivocally demonstrated in numerous studies in the last decades. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, had been traditionally considered subsidiary to the left hemisphere functions, although its role was less clearly defined. Recent clinical studies as well as investigations conducted with other methodologies (e.g. neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation and direct cortical electro-stimulation) leave several unanswered questions about the contribution of the right hemisphere in calculation. In particular, novel clinical studies show that right hemisphere acalculia encompasses a wide variety of symptoms, affecting even simple calculation, which cannot be easily attributed to spatial disorders or to a generic difficulty effect as previously believed. The studies reported here also show how the right hemisphere has its own specific role and that only a bilateral orchestration between the respective functions of each hemisphere guarantees, in fact, precise calculation. Vis-à-vis these data, the traditional wisdom that attributes to the right hemisphere a role mostly confined to spatial aspects of calculation needs to be significantly reshaped. The question for the future is whether it is possible to precisely define the specific contribution of the right hemisphere in several aspects of calculation while highlighting the nature of the cross-talk between the two hemispheres. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The origins of numerical abilities’.


1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari R. Baum

Two tests of the ability of individuals with left-hemisphere damage (LHD) and right-hemisphere damage (RHD) and non-brain-damaged participants to identify phonemic and emphatic stress contrasts were undertaken. From a set of naturallyproduced base stimuli, two additional stimulus sets were derived. In one, fundamental frequency (F 0 ) cues to stress were neutralized, whereas in the other duration cues were effectively neutralized. Results demonstrated that individuals with LHD were unable to identify phonemic stress contrasts with better-thanchance accuracy; individuals with RHD performed worse than normal participants but significantly better than the patients with LHD—particularly with the original full-cue stimuli. All groups performed better on the emphatic stress subtest, with the scores of only the patients with LHD at chance level for the F 0 -neutralized stimuli. The findings are considered in relation to hypotheses concerning the hemispheric lateralization of prosodic processing, particularly with respect to a hypothesis that posits differential lateralization for specific acoustic parameters.


1989 ◽  
Vol 85-86 ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Cem Alptekin

L2 learners fall into two major categories in terms of their cognitive styles. The first group comprises the relatively analytical individuals, who are said to be predominantly field independent. The second group, on the other hand, embodies the relatively holistic persons, who are said to be chiefly field dependent. L2 learners are further classified in terms of their hemispheric processing styles. Some learners are left-hemisphere dominant while others are right-hemisphere dominant. The former are thought to be more efficient with analytic processing in which the left hemisphere specializes. By contrast, the latter are described as more efficient with holistic processing in which the right hemisphere specializes. After reviewing the available evidence for the associations between cognitive and hemispheric processing styles, the paper discusses the educational implications of L2 learners' differences with respect to cognitive and hemispheric dimensions.


Physiology ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 226-231
Author(s):  
G Berlucchi ◽  
GR Mangun ◽  
MS Gazzaniga

In callosotomy patients, the right hemisphere attends to the entire visual field, whereas the left hemisphere attends to the right field only. The occurence of rightward attentional biases, simulating a hemineglect from right hemisphere damage, suggests that in these patients visuospatial attention tends to be controlled by the left hemisphere.


Leonardo ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 405-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjan Chatterjee ◽  
Bianca Bromberger ◽  
William B. Smith ◽  
Rebecca Sternschein ◽  
Page Widick

We know little about the neurologic bases of art production. The idea that the right brain hemisphere is the “artistic brain” is widely held, despite the lack of evidence for this claim. Artists with brain damage can offer insight into these laterality questions. The authors used an instrument called the Assessment of Art Attributes to examine the work of two individuals with left-brain damage and one with right-hemisphere damage. In each case, their art became more abstract and distorted and less realistic. They also painted with looser strokes, less depth and more vibrant colors. No unique pattern was observed following right-brain damage. However, art produced after left-brain damage also became more symbolic. These results show that the neural basis of art production is distributed across both hemispheres in the human brain.


1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric A. Roy ◽  
Liana Brown ◽  
Tammi Winchester ◽  
Paula Square ◽  
Craig Hall ◽  
...  

Apraxia is an impairment in the ability to pantomime or imitate gestures usually caused by a stroke more frequently to the left than the right hemisphere. Due to the complex nature of apraxia, disruptions to a number of different cognitive and motor processes have been proposed to underly this disorder. In order to examine disruptions to these processes the participation of a special population of people who have suffered a stroke has been enlisted. The role of memory has been particularly well elucidated in studies of this special population, as patients with left hemisphere damage exhibit a particular deficit in performing gestures from memory. In this paper, through use of a model depicting the stages involved in gestural production, the processes that might be affected at each stage by left hemisphere damage are examined. The implications of the “cognitive neuropsychology” approach for incorporating special populations into research in the movement sciences are considered.


1998 ◽  
Vol 172 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Weisbrod ◽  
Sabine Maier ◽  
Sabine Harig ◽  
Ulrike Himmelsbach ◽  
Manfred Spitzer

BackgroundIn schizophrenia, disturbances in the development of physiological hemisphere asymmetry are assumed to play a pathogenetic role. The most striking difference between hemispheres is in language processing. The left hemisphere is superior in the use of syntactic or semantic information, whereas the right hemisphere uses contextual information more effectively.MethodUsing psycholinguistic experimental techniques, semantic associations were examined in 38 control subjects, 24 non-thought-disordered and 16 thought-disordered people with schizophrenia, for both hemispheres separately.ResultsDirect semantic priming did not differ between the hemispheres in any of the groups. Only thought-disordered people showed significant indirect semantic priming in the left hemisphere.ConclusionsThe results support: (a) a prominent role of the right hemisphere for remote associations; (b) enhanced spreading of semantic associations in thought-disordered subjects; and (c) disorganisation of the functional asymmetry of semantic processing in thought-disordered subjects.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1602
Author(s):  
Christian Mancini ◽  
Giovanni Mirabella

The relationship between handedness, laterality, and inhibitory control is a valuable benchmark for testing the hypothesis of the right-hemispheric specialization of inhibition. According to this theory, and given that to stop a limb movement, it is sufficient to alter the activity of the contralateral hemisphere, then suppressing a left arm movement should be faster than suppressing a right-arm movement. This is because, in the latter case, inhibitory commands produced in the right hemisphere should be sent to the other hemisphere. Further, as lateralization of cognitive functions in left-handers is less pronounced than in right-handers, in the former, the inhibitory control should rely on both hemispheres. We tested these predictions on a medium-large sample of left- and right-handers (n = 52). Each participant completed two sessions of the reaching versions of the stop-signal task, one using the right arm and one using the left arm. We found that reactive and proactive inhibition do not differ according to handedness. However, we found a significant advantage of the right versus the left arm in canceling movements outright. By contrast, there were no differences in proactive inhibition. As we also found that participants performed movements faster with the right than with the left arm, we interpret our results in light of the dominant role of the left hemisphere in some aspects of motor control.


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