ABSTRACT
Long-standing observations of mood in unilaterally brain-damaged patients have indicated that the sides of the brain differ in regulating emotion (Alford, 1933; Babinski, 1914). Systematic study of this notion in patients with destructive and epileptogenic lesions, in psychiatric patients with affective disorders, and in normal samples has suggested that there is differential involvement of each side of the brain in particular types of affective states. One model that has been offered to account for these findings stipulates that in most individuals the right side of the brain sub serves certain negative emotion to a greater extent than the left side, whereas the opposite holds for certain positive emotions (Ahern & Schwartz, 1979; Sackeim, Greenberg, Weiman, Gur, Hungerbuhler & Geschwind, 1982; cf. Tucker, 1981).
