Right brain damage impairs recognition of negative emotions.

Patients with right or left hemisphere-damage and normal control groups were asked to judge facial emotions from photographs presented in two orientations--upright, inverted. Responses were elicited with a matching and a verbal labelling task. Normal controls were significantly superior in the judgment of facial emotions than left hemisphere-damaged patients, who in turn were significantly superior than right hemisphere-damaged patients. Negative-aroused (fear, anger) and negative-nonaroused (sadness, disgust) facial expressions were recognized with significantly greater accuracy by left hemisphere-damaged patients compared to right hemisphere-damaged patients; the group difference in performance was nonsignificant for positive (happiness, surprise) emotions.