Sémantique et hémisphère droit

Abstract

Ainsi, après avoir longtemps considéré que le langage était exclusivement dévolu au cerveau gauche, il est de plus en plus démontré que l’hémisphère droit joue également un rôle dans ce domaine. L’objectif de cet article est de résumer ce que l’on sait aujourd’hui de la contribution de l’hémisphère droit au traitement sémantique des mots isolés à travers trois approches différentes : comportementale, clinique et de neuro-imagerie.

Although language is a function traditionally attributed to the left hemisphere, experimental and clinical reports indicate that the right hemisphere may also have a capacity to process verbal information. Indeed, some attributes of words, including their concreteness, imageability and emotional component, have been shown to be associated with right-hemispheric processing capacities. In addition, studies on brain-damaged, splitbrain patients and studies realized with neuroimaging techniques have also suggested that the right hemisphere has some linguistic capacities. The main objective of this article is to review specific contribution of right cerebral hemisphere to semantic processing from three complementary approaches: (1) divided visualfield experiments with healthy participants, (2) studies of patients with acquired lesions of both left and right hemispheres, and (3) neuroimaging studies.