Right Hemisphere Contributions to Lexical Semantics

Language depends on a normally functioning left hemisphere. This central fact of human cerebral dominance was well established by 19th century aphasiologists and has been repeatedly confirmed by subsequent investigations. Predominance, however, does not imply exclusivity. As demonstrated by the commissurotomy patients studied by Eran Zaidel and associates, the right hemisphere is also capable of subserving some linguistic functions. The question, then, is not whether the right hemisphere ca...