Emotions and the Right Side of the Brain

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 1-2

3. What Are Emotions

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 3-11

4. Brain Structures Playing a Critical Role in Different Components and Hierarchical Levels of Emotions

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 13-25

5. The History of Research on Emotional Laterality

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 27-52

6. Recent Trends in the Study of the Links Between Emotions and Brain Laterality

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 53-71

7. General Neurobiological Models Advanced to Explain Results Obtained Following these New Lines of Research

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 73-80

8. Some Psychopathological Implications of Hemispheric Asymmetries for Emotions

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 81-91

9. Concluding Remarks: Special Relations Between Emotional System and Sympathetic Activities

   • Guido Gainotti

   Pages 93-96

This book focuses on asymmetries in brain structure and their role in emotional functions (such as amygdala in emotional comprehension, the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex in the integration between cognition and emotion and in the control of emotional reactions, and the anterior insula in the experience of emotions).

The idea of hemispheric asymmetries in emotional comprehension and expression was first proposed about a century after the first studies showing that the left hemisphere is dominant for language, but it quickly became very popular. Initial investigations considered the right and left hemispheres as single functional units, but in the last few years several researchers have focused attention on asymmetries in brain structures playing a critical role in specific components of emotional functions.

Furthermore, interesting data have been obtained by studying emotional and behavioural disorders of patients with asymmetrical forms of frontal or temporal variants of fronto-temporal degeneration.

Elaborating on these subjects requires, on the one hand, a consolidated understanding of how models concerning the relationships between emotions and hemispheric asymmetries evolved in time and, on the other hand, a sound interdisciplinary knowledge of psychology (nature, components and hierarchical organization of emotions) and neuroscience (neuroanatomy).        

This volume – intended for neurologists, neuroscientists and psychologists – pursues an organic and consistent approach to provide an overview of these complex and fascinating issues.

• Emotional and cognitive systems
• Models of emotional laterality
• Neural substrates of emotions
• Communicative and autonomic components of emotions
• Asymmetries in amygdala
• Asymmetries in orbito-frontal cortex
• Asymmetries in anterior insular cortex
• Asymmetrical forms of Fronto-Temporal Degeneration

• Department of Neurosciences, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Rome, Rome, Italy

  Guido Gainotti

Guido Gainotti was a Full Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Institute of  Neurology of the Catholic University of Rome until 2012. He is now Professor Emeritus of Neurology at the same University.

He was a member of the Editorial Boards of numerous international journals (e.g. Aphasiology, International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, Functional Neurology, Journal of Neurolinguistics, Neuropsychologia, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Journal of Rehabilitation and Health) and of the Handbook of Neuropsychology. Dr. Gainotti is also Acting Editor of Neuropsychological Rehabilitation and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. He recently edited a Special Issue of Frontiers in Bioscience entitled: 'Familiar people recognition disorders' (2014) and a Special Section of Neuropsychologia dealing with ‘familiar voice recognition’.

He has published about 300 papers in international journals in the fields of neurology, neuropsychology, psychiatry and neurosciences as well as books mainly dealing with topics of cognitive and clinical neuropsychology and of cognitive neurosciences.

His research on the different emotional reactions of right and left brain-damaged patients allowed him to first advance the hypothesis of a right hemisphere dominance for emotional behaviour. He has also authored papers on topics such as: (a) the mechanisms underlying the unilateral spatial neglect syndrome; (b) the nature of semantic-lexical disorders in aphasia and in Alzheimer’s disease; (c) the nature and the anatomical correlates of category-specific semantic disorders; (d) the mechanisms and anatomical substrates of familiar people recognition; (e) the mechanisms and anatomical substrates of multimodal people recognition disorders; and (f) the neuropsychological features that differentiate Alzheimer's disease from the other clinical forms of dementia and that best predict the progression from MCI to dementia.

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