Can the right hemisphere mediate language as well as the left? A critical review of recent research

A critical review is provided of the literature on musical performance following intracarotid sodium Amytal injection and on studies of musical perception in groups of unilaterally brain-damaged persons. The sodium Amytal data suggest that both hemispheres are active in singing familiar songs, since injection into either hemisphere produces disruption of singing. Studies with brain-damaged populations generally find deficits after right-sided damage in tasks demanding processing of patterns of pitches (e. g., unfamiliar melodic sequences) as well as with differences in timbre. Damage to the right temporal lobe causes the most consistent deficits in these tasks. Damage to the left side does not impair performance on such tasks, but does cause problems when familiar tunes are involved, especially if naming or identification is required, regardless of the presence or absence of aphasia. Damage to the right hemisphere also affects performance in such cases, but not usually to the extent that left-hemisphere lesions do.

Download Full-text

Is human face recognition lateralized to the right hemisphere due to neural competition with left-lateralized visual word recognition? A critical review

Brain Structure and Function ◽

10.1007/s00429-021-02370-0 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Bruno Rossion ◽

Aliette Lochy

Keyword(s):

Face Recognition ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Critical Review ◽

Right Hemisphere ◽

Visual Word ◽

Human Face ◽

Human Face Recognition ◽

The Right ◽

Neural Competition

Download Full-text

Investigation of the Effect of Mode and Tempo on Emotional Responses to Music Using EEG Power Asymmetry

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000099 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 142-148 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Konstantinos Trochidis ◽

Emmanuel Bigand

Keyword(s):

Left Hemisphere ◽

Right Hemisphere ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Interactive Effects ◽

Eeg Activity ◽

Musical Excerpt ◽

Major Mode ◽

Musical Modes ◽

Slow Tempo ◽

The Right

The combined interactions of mode and tempo on emotional responses to music were investigated using both self-reports and electroencephalogram (EEG) activity. A musical excerpt was performed in three different modes and tempi. Participants rated the emotional content of the resulting nine stimuli and their EEG activity was recorded. Musical modes influence the valence of emotion with major mode being evaluated happier and more serene, than minor and locrian modes. In EEG frontal activity, major mode was associated with an increased alpha activation in the left hemisphere compared to minor and locrian modes, which, in turn, induced increased activation in the right hemisphere. The tempo modulates the arousal value of emotion with faster tempi associated with stronger feeling of happiness and anger and this effect is associated in EEG with an increase of frontal activation in the left hemisphere. By contrast, slow tempo induced decreased frontal activation in the left hemisphere. Some interactive effects were found between mode and tempo: An increase of tempo modulated the emotion differently depending on the mode of the piece.

Download Full-text

Right-Hemisphere Specialization for Contour Grouping

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000252 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 61 (5) ◽

pp. 331-339 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gregor Volberg

Keyword(s):

Right Hemisphere ◽

Contour Detection ◽

Global Processing ◽

Detection Accuracy ◽

Frequency Spectra ◽

Visual Hemifield ◽

Spatial Frequencies ◽

A Chain ◽

The Right ◽

Hemisphere Specialization

Previous studies often revealed a right-hemisphere specialization for processing the global level of compound visual stimuli. Here we explore whether a similar specialization exists for the detection of intersected contours defined by a chain of local elements. Subjects were presented with arrays of randomly oriented Gabor patches that could contain a global path of collinearly arranged elements in the left or in the right visual hemifield. As expected, the detection accuracy was higher for contours presented to the left visual field/right hemisphere. This difference was absent in two control conditions where the smoothness of the contour was decreased. The results demonstrate that the contour detection, often considered to be driven by lateral coactivation in primary visual cortex, relies on higher-level visual representations that differ between the hemispheres. Furthermore, because contour and non-contour stimuli had the same spatial frequency spectra, the results challenge the view that the right-hemisphere advantage in global processing depends on a specialization for processing low spatial frequencies.

Download Full-text