The role of the right and left hemispheres in emotional evaluation of visual stimuli

Altered Neural Activity and Emotions Following Right Middle Cerebral Artery Stroke

“…Therefore, impairment in the experience of pleasant emotions following right MCA stroke may result from additional dysfunction in frontal (and cerebellar (64, 65)) networks normally promoting linguistic labeling of emotions. (66-68) While this functional impairment to the left hemisphere may raise concern that subjects were unable to appropriately speak their emotional reactions due to impairment in language (while experience was intact), this possibility is low in light of the little verbal output needed to express the emotion, the exclusion of subjects with significant language difficulties, and especially because of the relative lack of alteration of MCA stroke subjects’ responses to negative stimuli. Nonetheless, the lower activity in the left hemisphere is consistent with the language-based conceptualization of acquired alexithymia.…”