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Knowledge of visual attributes in the right hemisphere

Nature Neuroscience volume 9, pages 964–970 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Neurobiological theories of knowledge processing are biased toward the language-dominant (usually the left) hemisphere. Does the right hemisphere critically contribute to knowledge processing? J.A. is a left-hemisphere language-dominant individual who suffered a lesion confined to the right mid- and anterior fusiform gyrus. Although her language abilities are intact, she showed a partial loss of knowledge of the visual attributes of biological and nonbiological entities. This was observed regardless of the task performed: object discrimination, oral feature generation, forced-choice naming-to-definition or free-hand drawing. Functional-associative and nonvisual sensory attributes were spared. The same region that was lesioned in J.A. was activated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in 27 volunteers who retrieved semantic associations between concepts, but only if the concepts were represented as pictures and not as words. Therefore, right fusiform gyrus critically contributes to the conscious recollection of visual attributes of familiar entities.

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Figure 1: Neuroanatomy of J.A.'s lesion.
Figure 2: Object identification and name retrieval in J.A., M.V. and control subjects.
Figure 3: Knowledge of visual attributes.
Figure 4: Associative-semantic knowledge.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M.M. Mesulam, G. Orban, G. Storms and R. Vogels for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Supported by Fund for Scientific Research (Flanders) (G0277.05), KU Leuven (OT/04/41) and the Medical Foundation Queen Elisabeth. R.V. is a clinical investigator of the Fund for Scientific Research (Flanders).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Neurology Laboratory, KU Leuven, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Leuven, 3000, Herestraat 49, Belgium

    Mathieu Vandenbulcke & Rik Vandenberghe

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Herestraat 49, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Mathieu Vandenbulcke

  3. Department of Radiology, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Herestraat 49, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Ronald Peeters

  4. Department of Neurology, University Hospital Gasthuisberg, Herestraat 49, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Katrien Fannes & Rik Vandenberghe

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  1. Mathieu Vandenbulcke
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Correspondence to Rik Vandenberghe.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Neuropsychological profile in JA and MV. (PDF 63 kb)

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Vandenbulcke, M., Peeters, R., Fannes, K. et al. Knowledge of visual attributes in the right hemisphere. Nat Neurosci 9, 964–970 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1721

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