REVIEW ARTICLE Right hemisphere language functions and schizophrenia: the forgotten hemisphere?

This review highlights the importance of right hemisphere language functions for successful social communication and advances the hypothesis that the core deficit in psych-osis is a failure of segregation of right from left hemi-sphere functions. Lesion studies of stroke patients and dichotic listening and functional imaging studies of healthy people have shown that some language functions are mediated by the right hemisphere rather than the left. These functions include discourse planning /comprehen-sion, understanding humour, sarcasm, metaphors and indirect requests, and the generation /comprehension of emotional prosody. Behavioural evidence indicates that patients with typical schizophrenic illnesses perform poorly on tests of these functions, and aspects of these functions are disturbed in schizo-affective and affectiv