RIGHT-HEMISPHERE MEMORY SUPERIORITY - STUDIES OF A SPLIT-BRAIN PATIENT

Six experiments explored hemispheric memory differences in a patient who had undergone complete corpus callosum resection. The right hemisphere was better able than the left to reject new events similar to originally presented materials of several types, including abstract visual forms, faces, and categorized lists of words. Although the left hemisphere is capable of mental manipulation, imagination, semantic priming, and complex language production, these functions are apparently linked to memory confusions-confusions less apparent in the more literal right hemisphere. Differences between the left and right hemispheres in memory for new schematically consistent or categorically related events may provide a source of information allowing people to distinguish between what they actually witnessed and what they only inferred.