Role of the right and left brain hemispheres in recognition of faces

Our own and literature data are presented on the role of the right and left cerebral hemispheres in processing of the facial pictures transformed by emotional expressions or by a turn. It has been shown that only in the case of the right hemisphere inhibition induced by an unilateral electric seizure, the ability to identify the half-faced pictures presented to the left and right visual fields with the full-faced ones of the same individual is essentially disturbed; the erroneous recognition of facial side-views oriented to the left as those turned to the right occurs; the selection of the prototype from a set of facial pictures with different expressions is disturbed. The right hemisphere is likely to be responsible for an integral visual perception of the facial shape that is invariant to the transformations of similarity and turn. The role of the mechanisms of spatial attention, assessing the orientation of pictures and identification of the shape are discussed. It is suggested that the relationship of these mechanisms in the right hemisphere provides for a constancy of perception of human faces.