[Consciousness disorders in focal lesions of the right and left cerebral hemispheres]

In the light of modern concepts of functional asymmetry in the human brain, the authors analyse paroxysmal conditions of changed consciousness which occurred in 160 patients with lesions of the hemispheres due to brain tumors (75 patients) and in epilepsy (85 patients). It is shown that certain forms of changed consciousness are characteristic of disorders of the right and left hemispheres in right-handedness. This clinical fact is taken as a basis for the assumption that in the formation of consciousness both hemispheres in different ways play a certain role and they provide different "formating" kinds of consciousness: the right hemisphere--a direct perception or a sensory perception of the environment and itself, the left--process of abstract perception based on speech, symbols, semantics.