Language Alterations due to Right Hemisphere Lesions

The role of right hemisphere (RH) in language and communication has been a subject of debate over the last decades. Studies derived from RH lesions and functional neuroimaging in the past years have, nevertheless, shed some light on the multiple roles of the RH in linguistic processing and several aspects of communication in a broader sense. It is now recognized that the RH plays an important role in decoding “non-literal” language, such as emotional prosody, metaphors and figurative language interpretation. However, the RH also plays an important role in discourse elaboration (macrostructure) and pragmatics, as well as in “grasping” the implicit meaning in cases of irony, motivations, and emotional states that are often embedded in daily communication.

Keywords: Right hemisphere, discourse, emotional prosody, figurative language