No strong evidence for lateralisation of word reading and face recognition deficits following posterior brain injury

• Published in: Journal of cognitive psychology (Hove, England) Vol. 26; no. 5; pp. 550 - 558
• Main Authors: Gerlach, Christian, Marstrand, Lisbet, Starrfelt, Randi, Gade, Anders
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 04.07.2014; Taylor & Francis; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Biological and medical sciences; Face recognition; Facial recognition technology; Lateralisation; Medical sciences; Neurology; Object recognition; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; PCA stroke; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Vascular diseases and vascular malformations of the nervous system; Word reading; Word; Cognitive disorder; Lateralisation; Central nervous system; Cardiovascular disease; Cognition; Posterior cerebral artery; Encephalon; PCA stroke; Vascular disease; Language; Word reading; Face; Laterality; Cerebrovascular disease; Human; Nervous system diseases; Stroke; Hemispheric specialization; Face recognition; Object recognition; Cerebral disorder; Reading; Central nervous system disease; Recognition
• ISSN: 2044-5911; 2044-592X
• DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2014.928713

Face recognition and word reading are thought to be mediated by relatively independent cognitive systems lateralised to the right and left hemispheres, respectively. In this case, we should expect a higher incidence of face recognition problems in patients with right hemisphere injury and a higher incidence of reading problems in patients with left hemisphere injury. We tested this hypothesis in a group of 31 patients with unilateral right or left hemisphere infarcts in the territory of the posterior cerebral arteries. In most domains tested (e.g., visual attention, object recognition, visuo-construction, motion perception), we found that both patient groups performed significantly worse than a matched control group. In particular, we found a significant number of face recognition deficits in patients with left hemisphere injury and a significant number of patients with word reading deficits following right hemisphere injury. This suggests that face recognition and word reading may be mediated by more bilaterally distributed neural systems than is commonly assumed.