Appreciation of emotional expressions in the visual and auditory modality in normal and brain-damaged patients

Right-handed patients with right-sided, left-sided or without brain lesions, were tested for their appreciation of pictures of faces and tape-recorded voices carrying emotional expressions. The right hemisphere group was impaired in relation to the left and normal group. On the auditory test the impaired right-sided group showed confusion of all emotional categories. On the visual test, the same patients evaluated all emotional qualities to be happy or neutral. It is suggested that different mechanisms explain these findings: one of defective perceptual analysis, prominent in the auditory test, and one of change of mood in an euphoric direction specific to patients suffering damage to the right hemisphere.