Recognition memory for emotional facial expressions in patients with focal cerebral lesions

Abstract

A test of memory for emotional facial expressions was administered to 49 brain-damaged and 15 control subjects. On this task, patients with right-hemisphere lesions were more impaired than left-hemisphere patients; also, patients with frontal lobe lesions were more impaired than patients with posterior brain damage. Whereas trends in the data suggested that the anterior group's impaired memory for facial expressions may be dissociable from their deficient recall of facial identity, these two abilities were not dissociable in right-hemisphere patients. No lesion subgroup had selectively preserved recall of specific emotional expressions. There was no correlation between recall and production of facial expressions.