Opposite Superiorities of the Right and Left Cerebral Hemispheres in Discriminative Reaction Time to Physiognomical and Alphabetical Material

Asymmetries of the human social brain in the visual, auditory and chemical modalities

“…Experiments making use of the divided visual field technique, instead, consist in the very brief (tachistoscopic) presentation of stimuli accurately confined to the left or the right visual hemifield, ensuring that the stimuli are processed by the hemisphere contralateral to the side of presentation. Using this technique with faces as stimuli in a variety of tasks, a right-hemispheric superiority for facial recognition has been substantially confirmed by various researchers during many decades (Rizzolatti et al 1971;Leehey et al 1978;Grega et al 1988;Rhodes & Wooding 1989;Dutta & Mandal 2002). In this scenario of converging evidence, a factor that has been shown to modulate lateralization is the attribute of familiarity, as different investigations led to conflicting results when the hemispheric asymmetry for the recognition of familiar or famous (versus unknown) faces was tested, some evidence suggesting a lefthemispheric superiority (Marzi & Berlucchi 1977), other studies a right-hemispheric superiority (Levine & Koch-Weser 1982), and others no difference between the hemispheres (Kampf et al 2002), or interactions between laterality and angle of view (Laeng & Rouw 2001).…”

Left Hemifield Superiority and the Extraction of Physiognomic Information

“…This manipulation may play a role similar to masking, by making low level visual cues unavailable for the decision.) Left side superiority has been found by authors who used a small constant set of pictures (Geffen et al, 1971 ;Klein et al 1976;Moscovitch étal., 1976;Rizzolatti«?/al. 1971)because the presented picture had to be compared with a memorised face.…”

Right-nostril advantage for discrimination of odors

“…These effects have been related to left-hemispheric dominance for language function, because the pathways involved are crossed. Conversely, for stimuli that require processing mechanisms presumed to involve right-hemisphere specialization, such as musical sounds, faces, or visuospatial material, the asymmetries tend to favor the left ear or the left visual field (e.g., Kimura, 1964;Rizzolatti, Umilta, & Berlucchi, 1971;Zatorre, 1979). Although such asymmetries are, at best, an indirect index of the differences between left-and right-hemispheric function, subject to alteration by numerous extraneous variables, they have nevertheless attained importance in neuropsychological studies of normal persons because they are noninvasive, and because they afford insight into one aspect of cerebral function.…”