This article presents a review of the neural mechanisms underlying emotional processing deficits (EPDs) in individuals with unilateral brain damage. First, key theoretical issues pertaining to the neuropsychology of emotion are presented. These include parameters of emotional processing, the componential approach, emotional domains, and hypotheses regarding hemispheric specialization for emotion. Second, the literature on hemispheric asymmetries for emotion is reviewed in terms of processing mode (perception and expression) and communication channel (facial, prosodic-intonational, and lexical-verbal). Studies involving normal adults and individuals with right- or left-sided brain damage are reviewed. Third, recent findings identifying the role of the right hemisphere in emotional processing are described. The article is concluded by aligning these new data with findings from the general literature, providing added support for the right-hemisphere emotion hypothesis.

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Verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production were examined in 16 right brain-damaged (RBD), 16 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 normal control right-handed adults. The facilitation effect of emotional content, valence hypothesis, and relationship between pragmatics and emotion were evaluated. Participants produced monologues while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Transcribed monologues were rated for appropriateness on 6 pragmatic features: conciseness, lexical selection, quantity, relevancy, specificity, and topic maintenance. Overall, brain-damaged groups were rated as significantly less appropriate than normals. Consistent with the facilitation effect, emotional content enhanced pragmatic performance of LBD aphasic participants yet suppressed performance of RBD participants. Contrary to the valence hypothesis, RBD participants were more impaired for positive emotions and LBD participants for negative emotions. Pragmatic appropriateness was not strongly correlated with a measure of emotional intensity.

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Disorders in nonverbal communication of emotion have been documented in patients with right hemisphere pathology; lexical expression of emotion is virtually unstudied. In this preliminary investigation, emotionally laden slides were used to elicit discourse from right brain-damaged (RBD), left brain-damaged (LBD), and normal control (NC) subjects. New techniques were developed to examine the ability of these subjects to express emotion in words; formalistic and pragmatic analyses of the discourse were conducted. RBDs, relative to NCs and LBDs, were less successful in using words to convey emotion and produced words of lower emotional intensity. LBD aphasics, despite their linguistic deficits, were comparable to NCs in conveying emotional valence. The data tend to support the speculation that the right hemisphere is dominant for lexical expression of emotion. This study has implications for the neuropsychological investigation of language, emotion, and the brain.

Linguistic coherence and cohesion were examined in patients with unilateral left brain damage (LBD), unilateral right brain damage (RBD), and normal control (NC) right-handed adults. Groups were matched for age, gender, occupation, and education. Brain-damaged groups did not differ for months post onset or intrahemispheric lesion site. Contrary to previous literature, results indicated that LBDs, all of whom were aphasic, demonstrated impairments in coherence but not cohesion, relative to NCs and RBDs. Surprisingly, among RBDs, overall coherence and cohesion were spared. When the relationship between measures of coherence and cohesion was examined, there were few significant correlations and no systematic patterns. Results support the notion that coherence and cohesion represent coexisting and independent linguistic systems. Further, the findings suggest that descriptions of discourse integrity need to account for the perspective of both the speaker and listener.