Identification of visually presented objects and words is facilitated by implicit memory
for past visual experiences with those items. Several behavioral and neuroimaging studies
suggest that this form of memory is dependent on perceptual processes localized in the
right occipital lobe. We tested this claim by examining implicit memory in patients with
extensive right occipital lobe lesions, using lexical-decision, mirror-reading,
picture-fragment, and word-fragment-completion tests, and found that these patients
exhibited normal levels of priming. We also examined implicit memory in patients with
complete callosotomies, using standard and divided-visual-field word-fragment-completion
procedures, and found that the isolated left hemisphere exhibited normal priming effects.
The results indicate that the right occipital lobe does not play a necessary role in
visual implicit memory, and that the isolated left hemisphere can support normal levels of
visual priming in a variety of tasks.
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