Right Hemisphere Disorders

Right hemisphere functions

Processing and production of nonlinguistic elements of language (prosody, facial expressions, body language, emotion), localizing targets in space, identifying figure-ground relationships, musicality/processing music, perception of Gestalt

Etiologies of right hemisphere damage

Right hemisphere CVA, trauma to right hemisphere such as a TBI, many degenerative disorders

Hallucination

A sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch that a person believes to be real but is not rea. Hallucinations can be caused by nervous system disease, certain drugs, or mental disorders

Agnosias

A group of conditions where damage to your brain interferes with how the brain processes or understands information coming in from your senses. Visual, auditory, and tactile agnosias

Neglect

Inability to attend to or recognize the body and environment contralateral to the lesioned hemisphere

Delusion

A fixed false belief based on an inaccurate interpretation of an external reality despite evidence to the contrary

Confabulation

An error of memory when the person inadvertently fabricates inaccurate answers

Affect

The immediate observable expression of emotion (flat, labile, blunted)

Communication deficits with right hemisphere disorders

Difficulties with pragmatics; difficulty with prosody receptively and/or expressively, prosopagnosia, visual agnosia

Prosopagnosia

Inability to recognize a familiar face

Visual agnosia

Inability to perceive visual stimuli of an object or scene appropriately

Hemibody neglect

Neglect of the side of the body; unaware of the neglected side. Sometimes even confabulates about neglected side

Hemispatial neglect

Unable to attend to the affected side of the body

Asomatognosia

Inability to recognize or acknowledge a part of their own body as belonging to themself

Anosognosia

Inability to recognize or realize that s/he has a problem