Left and Right Hemisphere contributions...
Buchtel, H.A. (2001) Left and right hemisphere
contributions to physiognomic and verbal
discrimination.
Neuropsychology, 15:597-606.
Abstract
The relative contributions of the right- and left-temporal lobes in rapid
recognition of faces and letters were studied in patients with anterior right- or
left-temporal lobe excisions and a matched control group. Based on findings with
unilateral and bilateral brain damage, it was hypothesized that left hemisphere
damage would not change the reaction time of letters analyzed by the right
hemisphere, and that right hemisphere damage would not change the reaction time of
faces analyzed by the left hemisphere. The hypothesis was supported for letters but
not for faces. Patients in the right-temporal group, particularly those with large
hippocampal removals, were slow to recognize faces in both visual fields. Two
possible explanations for the findings with faces are explored: One holds that right
hemisphere mechanisms are involved even when a face is presented to the left
hemisphere for rapid recognition; the other holds that specialized encoding is
carried out by the right hemisphere during learning, with the encoded template then
being used by each hemisphere independently.
http://www.umich.edu/~gusb/neuropsych.501.html