RHD Flashcards
Right Hemisphere functions
Arousal, orientation, vigilance and selective attention
Visual perception: holistic gestault-like stimuli, geometric and spatial information,
facial recognition, body image
Emotional experience and expressions:
angry and happy emotions
Perception of temporal order
Perception of musical harmony
Other aspects of communication…..
Aspects of Communication
Discourse comprehension and production
R Hemi may be less efficient at understanding verbs than nouns
Complex inferences implied in verbal
Communicative efficiency and specificity
Understanding alternative/ambiguous meanings
Understanding and expressing emotional tone
Understanding and expressing prosodic aspects
R inferior frontal gyrus
R posterior temporo-parietal region for understanding prosody
Pragmatics
Pragmatic communication skills:
turn-taking,
topic maintenance,
social appropriateness,
eye contact
Neuropathology: Etiologies
CVA Tumors Head Trauma Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, other neurological diseases Sites of lesions: See Next Table
Perceptual and Attentional Deficits
Left-neglect
Damage to any lobe in either hemisphere can lead to neglect
Left brain damage: right-neglect = 2-15%
Right brain damage: left-neglect = 31-90%
More severe and consistent, resistant to therapy
Characteristics of Left-neglect:
Right focus, don’t notice left
Difficulty shifting attention from right to left
Failure to perceive left-sided tactile or perceptual stimuli
Failure to copy the left side of a picture of design
Painting only right half of a face-ignore left
Extreme right-centered attention to an array of stimuli
Paying attention only to the right side of a space described from memory
Bumping into things on the left
Left Neglect, continued
Using only right-sided objects
Disownership of the left side of the body
Denying illness (anosagnosia)
Auditory neglect
Motor neglect
Left-neglect in reading
Left neglect in writing
Facial Recognition deficits
Difficulty recognizing familiar faces
Difficulty choosing pictures of faces just shown
Problems naming the pictures of faces of famous persons
Capgras syndrome: delusional belief that their friends and family members are not their real selves but imposters or doubles.
Other Visuoperceptual Disorders
Achromatopsia:
Simultanagnosia:
Pallinopsia:
loss of color vision
inability to perceive simultaneously the multiple details of a visual display.
variant of hallucination, major feature is abnormal persistence or recurrence of visual images after the stimulus has been removed.
Attentional Deficits
Reduced state of arousal
Difficulty in sustaining attention
Difficulty in paying selective attention
Disorientation:
Topographic disorientation
Geographic disorientation
Reduplicative paramnesia
(rare condition)-belief in the existence of multiple and identical persons, places and body parts
Affective Deficits(Affect = Behavioral expressions of emotional states or experiences)
Difficulty understanding emotions
Difficulty stating the emotions depicted in pictures stories
Problems recognizing emotions in sentences
Problems understanding emotional tone of voice
Difficulty in emotional expressions
Prosodic deficits:
Monotonous
Impaired stress patterns
Reduced rate
Devoid of emotion
Impaired in prosodic comprehension
Discourse:
social communication skills, involves descriptions of events, objects, and performance, extended talk on a given topic, conversations.
Discourse Deficits
Distinguishing significant from irrelevant info.
Use tangential, inconsequential aspects of topics
Conversational speech-irrelevant or tangential
Understanding implied meanings, abstract words, metaphors, irony, and humor
Premature incorrect inferences (jumping to conclusions)
Confabulation and excessive speech
Unelaborated narratives
