Dissociation of autonomic and subjective responses to emotional slides in right hemisphere damaged patients.

Autonomic and subjective responses to emotional and neutral slides were studied in patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD), left hemisphere damage (LHD) and normal controls (CON). Orienting and habituation to a series of pure tones (1000 Hz) were also examined. All subjects showed appropriate slide recognition and there were no group differences in subjective ratings. The CON group showed higher skin conductance responses (SCRs) to the emotional slides relative to the neutral slides, while the RHD group showed lower SCRs to both sets of slides. The LHD group showed higher SCRs independent of slide type. The results support the hypothesis (Heilman and Watson, Handbook of Neurology, Elsevier Science, 1989) that emotional paucity in RHD patients may be related to reduced autonomic arousal. However, there were no significant differences between groups in the orienting response or habituation to loud tones, suggesting that decreased arousal following RHD is not ubiquitous.