[1] The right hemisphere of the brain coordinates tasks for functional communication, which include problem solving, memory, and reasoning.

[citation needed] Patients with right hemisphere brain damage most commonly have difficulties with attention, perception, learning, memory, recognition and expression of emotion, and neglect.

[4] Other frequently occurring, though slightly less common, deficits include reasoning and problem solving, awareness, and orientation.

[7] Unlike those of people with aphasia, the speech patterns of individuals with right hemisphere damage are not typically characterized by “word finding problems, paraphasias, circumlocutions, or impaired phonological processing.” Circumlocution in persons with RHD tends to center around general concepts, not specific words.

Linguistically, in cases in which RHD patients seem to have syntactic deficits, they are typically the result of problems with semantic processing.

In other words, RHD patients have trouble with higher-level language tasks (relating to semantic and lexical processing) less common in day-to-day, average discourse.

Their comprehension of simple, unambiguous sentences also remains intact, as does their basic word retrieval; this evidence suggests that these tasks are functions of the left hemisphere.

For example, when asked to name vegetables, people with RHD would name spinach, cabbage, and lettuce, which share the attributes not only of being vegetables but also of being “green and leafy.” Such results “support a model of semantic processing in which the [right hemisphere] is superior in generating multiple, loosely connected meanings with little overlap,” a function clearly affected by right hemisphere damage.

They also tend to show a lack of awareness for the knowledge they share with those they are communicating with and will mention people or things for which others do not have a reference.

Considering the highly contextual and often ambiguous nature of discourse, it tends to be the area of communication most affected by right hemisphere damage.

These experiments have provided further evidence for the idea that individuals with right hemisphere damage have a hard time recognizing emotions of others as they do not mention them when asked to describe the paintings.

In addition, this process has suggested that they do not pick up relevant cues and have difficulty incorporating the small details they do notice together to form a big picture.

As a result of their difficulties understanding alternate meanings and making situational inferences, people with right hemisphere damage face significant challenges in terms of discourse.

Other etiologies that cause right hemisphere damage include: trauma (traumatic brain injury), disease, seizures disorders, and infections.

[21]" Adults with right hemisphere damage may exhibit behavior that can be characterized by insensitivity to others and preoccupation with self; unawareness of the social context of conversations; and verbose, rambling and tangential speech.

Computerized tomography (CT) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are often used to determine where the damage occurred and how severe it is (ASHA).

The research that has been done has shown that persons with right hemisphere damage benefit from therapy at both the chronic and acute stages of recovery for language.

[24] Research has also shown that treatment given by speech-language pathologists to persons with right hemisphere damage results in improvement in the areas of problem solving, attention, memory, and pragmatics.

Data from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) indicate that treatment for individuals with right hemisphere damage tends to focus on areas other than communication, including swallowing, memory, and problem solving.

[24] Small-scale and pilot studies have been conducted in recent years to fill the identified gaps in the treatment literature.

Despite this, right hemisphere damage can lead to deficits in discourse abilities, including difficulty with interpretation of abstract language, making inferences, and understanding nonverbal cues.

The training program included five phases focused on facilitating the use of word meanings and semantic associations to increase participants’ understanding of metaphors.

[31] Again, additional research is needed to replicate and extend results, but the emerging literature represents a small step toward evidence-based treatments for right hemisphere damage.

Recovery of functional abilities is often greater in male stroke survivors than females, especially in the area of activities of daily living.

[34] Anosognosia is a lack of awareness or understanding of the loss of function caused by the brain injury and is common in individuals who have suffered a right hemisphere stroke.

In order to make functional recovery gains, right hemisphere stroke survivors should receive rehabilitation services, so patients with anosognosia should be encouraged to seek out additional treatment.

However, due to the anosognosia, these patients often report a higher perceived quality of life than other right hemisphere stroke survivors because of the unawareness of the resulting deficits (Daia et al., 2014).

When the nurse asked him to stop, he looked down and said, “that’s not my hand.” Since the right hemisphere controls motor functioning for the left side of the body, the patient did not recognize the actions of his own hand and made up a story to explain what was going on.

[36] For the majority of the nineteenth century, the left brain hemisphere was the key focus of clinical research on language disorders (Brookshire, 2007).

[2] These formal tests assess areas such as understanding humor, metaphors, sarcasm, facial expression, and prosody.