Interhemispheric Communication via Direct Connections for Alternative Meanings of Ambiguous Words

Right hemisphere contributions to the comprehension of low-imagery words

“…The observation that both hemispheres contribute to the processing of low-imagery/abstract words, with the left hemisphere playing the primary role, may account for the inconsistencies in research investigating the contribution of each hemisphere to the processing of this type of word. More generally, the current findings are in accord with recent evidence of interhemispheric cooperation during linguistic processing (Banich & Karol, 1992;Berryman & Kennelly, 1992;Collins & Coney, 1998;Iacoboni & Zaidel, 1996;Mohr et al, 1994), and evidence that the full import of a message is derived through complementary processing in each hemisphere (Banich, 1995;Collins, 1999b;Grimshaw, 1998) with the right hemisphere playing a vital role in providing contextual information to complement on-going linguistic processing in the left hemisphere (Beeman & Chiarello, 1998;Brownell et al, 1995;Richards & Chiarello, 1997;Tompkins, 1990).…”

“…More recent research also indicates that semantic information generated in each hemisphere must be integrated to extract the full meaning of a linguistic message (e.g., Banich, 1995;Banich & Karol, 1992;Collins, 1999b).…”

“…Fortunately, there is considerable evidence that both hemispheres can recognise single words (Babkoff, Faust, & Lavidor, 1997;Chiarello, 1988;Faust, Kravetz, & Babkoff, 1993) and independently control word recognition (see Iacoboni & Zaidel, 1996, for a review of this evidence) and even though a RVF advantage is usually found for lexical decision tasks, both hemispheres can make lexical decisions without the necessity for callosal relay of information (Babkoff et al, 1997;Chiarello, 1988;Chiarello, Senehi, & Soulier, 1986; Abernethy & Coney, 1990;Zaidel, 1989;Zaidel, White, Sakurai, & Banks, 1988). More importantly, there is evidence that for priming tasks using lexical decision, initial processing of the prime is performed in the stimulated hemisphere and it is the semantically encoded product of this processing that exerts an influence on the opposite hemisphere (Collins) Abernethy & Coney, 1990;Collins, 1999b;Hardyck, Collins & Coney, 1998;Hardyck, Chiarello, Dronkers & Simpson, 1985). In a review of such evidence, Chiarello (1988) concluded that even though different encoding mechanisms are utilised by each hemisphere, access to lexical representations proceeds in a comparable fashion for LVF and RVF presentations.…”

Automatic semantic priming in the left and right hemispheres

“…When a stimulus is initially relayed to one hemisphere, information about that stimulus is quickly available to the opposite hemisphere in normal humans due to hemispheric transfer (Springer & Deutsch, 1997). Hemispheric transfer of semantic information is probably mediated through direct connections via the corpus callosum (Collins, 2002; Collins & Coney, 1998; Springer & Deutsch, 1997), whereas as other types of information, such as location, may be mediated at an early stage of processing through sub‐cortical pathways (Corballis, 1995). Hemispheric transfer is assumed to imply some loss of information due to a reduced signal to noise ratio (Springer & Deutsch, 1997).…”

Electrophysiological evidence for the action of a center-surround mechanism on semantic processing in the left hemisphere

“…These results are not surprising as using a central prime with a lateralized target been found to produce equivalent data to a condition where primes and targets were both foveally presented (Burgess and Simpson, 1988). Two laboratories (Abernethy and Coney, 1990; Koivisto and Laine, 1999, 2000; Collins, 2002) have produced behavioral category priming data that are at odds with those just reviewed. The data of Shears and Chiarello (2003) have more recently established that the different pattern of results obtained appear to be due to the use of the go-no-go paradigm.…”