# Hemispheric differences in memory and language

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN · 2020 · $332,579

## Abstract

Project Summary
  The capacity to comprehend language lies at the core of a person's ability to gain information from
the environment, perform everyday tasks, and maintain normal social relations. The critical role of the left
cerebral hemisphere (LH) in supporting these processes has served as a paradigmatic example of neural
specialization for higher cognitive functions. However, it is increasingly apparent that the right hemisphere
(RH) also makes important, distinctive contributions to language comprehension. The aim of the proposed
research is to delineate how processing resources distributed across the two cerebral hemispheres come
together in real time to mediate language comprehension and afford memory for verbal material and how
these processes and their underlying mechanisms change over the course of normal aging and in response
to task demands. The proposal builds on a theoretical framework, based on neuropsychological, behavioral,
and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies of language asymmetry, which asserts that LH and RH
language comprehension differ because comprehension is cognitively and neurally integrated with language
production only in the LH. Nineteen proposed experiments, conducted with both young and older adults,
use event-related brain potentials (ERPs), often in combination with visual half-field presentation techniques
to preferentially stimulate one hemisphere, to test the hypotheses that (1) the influence of predictive
mechanisms increases with more preparation time and changes both the nature and amount of perceptual
and semantic information that is gathered from incoming stimuli, (2) such prediction-driven differences in
stimulus processing have important downstream consequences for both implicit and explicit memory, and
(3) people differentially recruit language processing mechanisms depending on the perceived predictability
and importance of the material, affecting comprehension and later memory. These experiments lay the
foundation for an understanding of the computational and neurobiological roots of the complex and critical
cognitive skill that is language and offer the promise to inform strategies for optimizing the comprehensibility
and retention of verbal material – such as important health-related information.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9933760
- **Project number:** 5R01AG026308-13
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
- **Principal Investigator:** KARA D FEDERMEIER
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $332,579
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2005-07-15 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9933760

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9933760, Hemispheric differences in memory and language (5R01AG026308-13). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9933760. Licensed CC0.

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