Right brain damage impairs recognition of negative emotions.
Patients with right or left hemisphere-damage and normal control groups were asked to judge facial emotions from photographs presented in two orientations--upright, inverted. Responses were elicited with a matching and a verbal labelling task. Normal controls were significantly superior in the judgment of facial emotions than left hemisphere-damaged patients, who in turn were significantly superior than right hemisphere-damaged patients. Negative-aroused (fear, anger) and negative-nonaroused (sadness, disgust) facial expressions were recognized with significantly greater accuracy by left hemisphere-damaged patients compared to right hemisphere-damaged patients; the group difference in performance was nonsignificant for positive (happiness, surprise) emotions.
Mandal
M K
MK
Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
Tandon
S C
SC
Asthana
H S
HS
D000328:Adult; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*