LEFT-HEMISPHERE REPRESENTATIONS OF EMOTIONAL FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Researchers have suggested that the right hemisphere is superior at pr ocessing emotional facial expressions because it contains stored perce ptual 'templates' of facial expressions. We tested each hemisphere of a split-brain patient on two tasks involving emotional facial expressi ons. Both hemispheres performed equally well and significantly above c hance matching facial expressions with emotion words. The subject's ri ght hemisphere consistently performed well judging whether two facial expressions were the same or different. His left hemisphere performed poorly on this discrimination task at first, but showed a sharp improv ement when the instructions were changed slightly, emphasizing verbal labels for the facial expressions. Results suggest that 'facial expres sion templates' may not be stored only on the right.