Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of emotional content in word meanings: the effect of current and past depression.

We examined hemispheric lateralization of emotion processing by comparing the performance of clinically depressed, previously depressed, and control individuals on a divided visual field task. Participants were asked to make affective valence judgments for each in a series of laterally presented person-descriptive adjectives. Study results suggest that the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) is preferentially sensitive to the affective context of language. Among targets presented to the RH, depressed and previously depressed participants were significantly faster and more accurate in their judgments of negative target words, while controls responded more quickly and accurately to positive target words. No such effects were observed for targets presented to the left hemisphere. It is hypothesized that affective sensitivity may result in differences in semantic network organization across individuals who vary in affective experience.