Interhemispheric cooperation for face recognition but not for affective facial expressions

2003

Abstract Interhemispheric cooperation can be indicated by enhanced performance when stimuli are presented to both visual fields relative to one visual field alone. This “bilateral gain” is seen for words but not pseudowords in lexical decision tasks, and has been attributed to the operation of interhemispheric cell assemblies that exist only for meaningful words with acquired cortical representations. Recently, a bilateral gain has been reported for famous but not unfamiliar faces in a face recognition task [Neuropsychologia 40 (2002) 1841]. In Experiment 1 of the present paper, participants performed familiarity decisions for faces that were presented to the left (LVF), the right (RVF), or…