While the main focus of linking behavior to brain function has been on “cold” cognition, and more specifically on language and memory, a more minor stream of evidence has accumulated about the “social” brain. Two influential investigators have called attention to effects of lesions on social behavior and emotion processing. Babinski (1914) reported on a series of cases with moderate to severe brain damage who either denied the existence of symptoms (“anosognosie”) or even were oddly happy, optimistic and jocular (“anosodysaphorie”). These patients had lesions in the right hemisphere. Babinski’s contemporary, Hughlings-Jackson (1932), noticed the relatively intact social functioning of aphasic patients with left hemispheric lesions, concluding that it is the right hemisphere that regulates social cognition.
