The Involvement of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere in Communication

Dear Colleagues,

While the left cerebral hemisphere is dominant for language, there is increasing evidence that the right hemisphere is also involved in several aspects of verbal communication. Studies with both healthy participants and patients with right hemisphere lesions have suggested that the right hemisphere is involved in pragmatics, prosody, and the macrostructural aspects of language. Moreover, it has been argued that the cognitive mechanisms of executive functions and the theory of mind are associated with overall communication competence and could somehow mediate the relationship of linguistic components with right hemisphere structures. However, the exact role of the right hemisphere in underlying cognitive mechanisms (whether language-related or not) that support communication remains elusive. The heterogeneity of clinical populations studied, the breadth of constructs assessed (e.g., pragmatics), and the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the role of other cognitive mechanisms in related processes create a cloudy consensus: although the majority of researchers agree on the involvement of the right hemisphere in communication, evidence on the specifics of this involvement is so far inconclusive. Thus, the need for further research on the subject is evident.

This Special Issue aims to contribute to the field by bringing together studies on the role of the right hemisphere in communication. Submitted papers may involve—but need not be limited to—studies on the communication deficits of patients with right hemisphere lesions or the investigation of cognitive mechanisms and neural processes related to communication. We invite lesion studies, imaging studies in healthy populations, and studies investigating communication-related cognitive processing. Work for publication may come in the form of research papers, case studies, as well as reviews or meta-analyses from the fields of neuropsychology, neurology, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. 
Indicative topics for submission:

• Pragmatic deficits after right hemisphere lesions;
• Communication deficits in neurodegenerative diseases affecting the right hemisphere;
• Associations between pragmatics and other cognitive mechanisms such as the theory of mind and executive functions in clinical populations and healthy participants;
• Functional MRI and structural studies focusing on right-lateralized neural correlates of communication abilities in the healthy brain.

Dr. Dimitrios Kasselimis
Dr. Georgia Angelopoulou
Dr. Constantin Potagas
Prof. Dr. Dionysis Goutsos
Guest Editors

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