Drawing on the Wrong
Side of the Brain:
an Art Teacher’s Case for
Recognising NLD
Richard Warren
Abstract
Secondary art teachers sometimes agonise over
students who struggle, but are frustrated by the
general failure of the special educational needs
system to recognise such problems as worthy of
intervention or as more widely significant. Until
recently, any analyses of such learning difficulties
have found no support in educational psychology. This paper argues for the usefulness of the
profile of ‘non-verbal learning disorders’ (NLD),
which recognises visual-spatial problems associated with the right brain hemisphere. This
diagnosis remains controversial and is unrecognised in the UK. The paper looks at examples of
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work by a student of high academic ability that
seem to bear out this profile, discusses them in
relation to ‘right brain’ approaches to drawing,
and briefly examines some of the positive and
far-reaching implications for art teachers of the
growing recognition of NLD.
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Henry’s weird drawings
As some measure of their ability in art, we ask our
new year seven pupils to fill in a short questionnaire and to make a simple observed drawing.
Henry’s responses (not his real name) rang
alarms. Asked to draw a cube showing three
sides, he managed a wobbly rectangle divided
awkwardly into three segments (figure 1). He
clearly had problems visualising even simple
three-dimensional forms.
Henry’s drawing – a shoe or boot and a bottle
– was among the weakest of the intake (figure 2).
While he had dealt with the bottle in a schematic
way with chunky symmetry, his bizarre boot, with
no opening for the foot, betrayed a curious obsession with the wording of a label on the heel. But
there was also a surprise. Asked in the questionnaire to say what mood the artist might be trying
to express in a given painting (Van Gogh’s view of
his own bedroom), Henry’s peers had mostly
suggested ‘sad’, ‘lonely’ or (inevitably) ‘boring’.
Remarkably, Henry had written: ‘Emotional,
because it seems like a lost memory.’ Whatever
his problems with art, Henry was clearly no
slouch with language.
He had arrived with an estimated reading age
of 12.6 and a KSP [key stage points] score of 33 –
virtually at the top of the range. Henry’s SATs
marks [English, science and maths tests] ranged
from 65 to 81, scoring level 5C across the board.
Put simply, all these statistics fixed Henry well
within the top 25% of his year group.
For their first few weeks, we put our year
sevens through a catch-up drawing programme
derived from Betty Edwards’s celebrated Drawing
on the Right Side of the Brain, to help give them
increased self-confidence in observational drawing. The impact seems to feed through into the
wider art work of many. Edwards’s theory may not
be cutting-edge but we value it.Her well known
thesis, briefly, is that the dominant, languageoriented, abstract left hemisphere of the brain,
unless ‘switched off’, tends to suppress the ability of the mute, intuitive right hemisphere to see
things as-they-are. For example, she notes that
children trying to draw a cube, aware of its
‘squareness’, usually start with a square corner
and a flat base, as did Henry. To realise a threedimensional view, they must learn to suppress this
verbal, conceptual knowledge, lest it overwhelm
their purely visual perception [1].
It soon became obvious that Henry was an
intelligent and conscientious boy who was going
to find many aspects of art something of a struggle. Though some students do fail to respond to
our drawing programme, these are mostly at the
absolute bottom end of the SATs/KSPs range.
Henry’s academic ability made his case particularly interesting.
Edwards recommends upside-down copying
as a way of suspending left brain interference,
using as an example a Picasso line portrait of
Stravinsky [2]. Here, for comparison, is Henry’s
(unfinished) attempt at the same exercise, shown
the right way up (figure 3). He has been unable to
make connections between most lines and
shapes, drawing many in isolation, and
Stravinsky’s left hand was stretched absurdly to
fit when Henry noticed that it did not connect, as
required, with his right. He clearly recognised the
inverted face, where the left brain has stepped in
and ‘improved’ matters, modifying the actual
image with a set of facial schemas: for example,
solidifying the patchy moustache and providing a
highly abstract attempt at an inverted ear.
Another Edwards exercise requires the
student to trace out patiently the configuration of
lines and edges within their spare hand, initially
with their back turned to the drawing, and then in
a conventional drawing position [3]. We find that
this exercise not only helps to break down leftbrain preconceptions of familiar shapes, but also
produces drawings, even by the least able, with
a distinctively sensitive quality of line.
Initially (Figure 4a), Henry made a decent effort
to get to grips with some of the creases in his
palm. Then, however, the left-brain, forced to
contemplate too much unwanted information,
has ‘filled in’ with a rapid scattering of dashes,
providing a conceptual imitation of ‘what the
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teacher wanted’. The second drawing (Figure 4b)
is almost entirely left-brained, despite the pinpoint
observation of a mole at the base of the thumb!
Henry’s third and fourth fingers were gently
curled at the time, but he has simply marked their
position with loose outlines, somehow adding a
rudimentary extra finger in the process. It might
be objected that these ‘careless’ lines indicate a
student who is just not bothering, but Henry
made these drawings in silence, with no external
distraction, and giving every appearance of
concentrated activity.
It is a common art teacher grumble that
students’ learning difficulties in our subject are
not considered to have any wider significance, or
to merit serious investigation. Is there any body
of research that can shed light on Henry’s difficulties? I think so.
The case for non-verbal learning disorders
Betty Edwards’s approach to drawing is founded
on a recognition of the dual nature of the brain
that has since become consensual wisdom
among educational psychologists and school
special educational needs coordinators
(SENCOs). There is no need here to rehearse this
body of research in any detail, but it derives ultimately from the pioneer experiments of Roger W.
Sperry and others at the California Institute of
Technology in the late sixties and seventies with
‘split-brain’ patients, whose corpus callosum, the
bridge carrying the connections between left and
right hemispheres, had been surgically severed
to relieve severe epilepsy [4].
The right hemisphere has been found to be
superior in those modes of thinking involving
perception of difficult configurations. Right brain
recognition is particularly strong when meaningless
or unnamed images are presented, noticing the
shape of things more completely, without analysis,
and viewing components as an ensemble.
An imbalance between left and right hemisphere abilities, as detected, for example, by a
marked disparity of scores in verbal and non-verbal
intelligence tests, could be considered significant,
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but to date such results have only been considered
worth investigation in schools if, for instance, a low
verbal score might indicate dyslexia.
But what if the imbalance went the other way?
Particularly since the early nineties, much work
has been done in North America on the implications of right hemisphere deficit or dysfunction,
now characterised as non-verbal learning disorders (or disability) – NLD or NVLD for short. A
huge body of material, much of it stemming from
the work of Sue Thompson and Dr. Byron P.
Rourke, is now available online, particularly on the
NLDline, NLD on the Web and NLD Association
websites [5], and support networks have been
established for those diagnosed with NLD and
their families. However, this crusading work is
largely confined to the USA and even there the
diagnosis, as yet unrecognised by DSM-IV
(American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders),
remains controversial, with particular argument –
to which we shall return – about the relation
between NLD and Asperger’s Syndrome. In the
UK, the concept of NLD has no significant acceptance among educational psychologists or
SENCOs.
It is acknowledged that NLD appears to occur
much less frequently than more familiar learning
difficulties – perhaps one case in ten – though this
may be exaggerated by the bias towards testing
for literacy etc. While the main characteristics can
be simply hypothesised from Sperry’s ‘split-brain’
findings, NLD features have been observed in
cases of trauma to the right hemisphere or of
some comparable impairment such as hydrocephalus. In most instances, however, it has to be
said that the precise physical nature of the
‘deficit’, ‘dysfunction’ or imbalance is a matter of
speculation.
In narrow neuropsychological terms, NLD can
be defined as an imbalance in which the linear,
verbal left-brain focuses on details while the ability of the right-brain to appreciate underlying
themes and assemble the bigger picture is somehow impaired, but broader profiles include a
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Opposite Top Left:
Figure 1
Cube
Opposite Top Right:
Figure 2
First shoe and bottle
Opposite Middle
Right:
Figure 3
Stravinsky, after
Picasso
Opposite Middle:
and Bottom Left:
Figures 4A & 4B
Left hand, drawn
first behind the
back and then in
a conventional
posture
Opposite Bottom
Right:
Figure 5
Diagrams from
science exercise
book
Above Top Left:
Figure 6
Self portrait from
mirror – tones
drawn first
Above Top Right:
Figure 7
William Blake, after
Francis Bacon!
Above Middle
and Bottom Left:
Figures 8A & 8B
Typical geography
contour models and
Henry’s model
Above Middle
Right:
Figure 9
Second shoe
and bottle
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number of other indicators. In practice, such
profiles tend to be fluid, but working from various
sources [6] we can summarise the common core:
• Academic: difficulty with visualisation and
spatial perception; difficulty in conceptual
maths skills and higher reasoning
• Motor: problems with coordination and graphic
motor skills
• Social and emotional: problems understanding
non-verbal communication, poor social judgement and interaction, difficulty coping with new
situations
So is Henry an NLD ‘fit’? Without going into intrusive details, he seems to me to display a number
of indicators, other than just the visual. However,
his problems ‘passing on a beat’ in music are not
judged to be a wider cause for concern. His
science diagrams may be naively schematic to an
extreme, but a plane is a plane, so they can be
considered adequate (figure 5). Implications for
higher level tasks – problems arranging paragraphs on a page, for instance – may not become
evident till later on, if at all.
What visual-spatial problems, exactly?
Anecdotally, those diagnosed as NLD often claim
that they ‘basically don’t visualize’, and ‘think in
words, and can’t see pictures,’ though a more
distant or basic visual recall apparently survives:
The only times I really have pictures in my mind
are when recalling very early or very important
memories, when trying to navigate through a fairly
familiar area, or when I’m dreaming or almost
asleep [7].
Not surprisingly, this recall problem is seen as
translating into a childhood inability to draw,
whether from memory or by copying:
When my daughter was 4 years old … she was
asked to draw and couldn’t draw a coherent
picture. I vaguely wondered then if there was
something wrong, but the nurse just said, ‘Well,
we’ll call it okay.’
As part of my son’s neuropsych exam, he was
asked to copy some shapes and drawings, and he
was completely unable to do it [8].
When NLD children do draw, anecdotal evidence
suggests that they may have a very literal understanding of what is appropriate, which can create
problems:
My son … just received a ‘B’ in Art, because of his
‘bad’ behavior. He talks in class, has a hard time
following directions; i.e. the children had an art
project in class where they painted a bird on white
paper, then the teacher had them take black and
smudge the whole paper – then she had them
crumple the paper up in a ball, reopen it and that
was the project… He couldn’t understand why
they were ‘ruining’ the picture, and got upset
about it [9].
Such literalism must derive from the simplistic
and schematic visual understanding of the leftbrain, and might be comparable to the literal
understanding of language typical of Asperger’s
Syndrome etc (see below).
These problems become particularly obvious
at the stage when observational drawing is
attempted. Tonality seems to be an important
aspect of visual understanding resisted by the
left-brain. Henry’s self-portrait from the mirror,
drawn over two and a half lessons, shows beautifully what happens when the relationship
between tonality and the gestalt, which we take
for granted, is interrupted. Here the left-brain
struggles, in the first instance, to recognise the
irregular and ‘meaningless’ shapes of shadows,
either simplifying or duplicating them, and, in the
second instance, to relate these shapes to the
familiar features of eye, nose, ear and mouth,
which are highly schematic, and superimposed
almost as if on a transparency (figure 6). Students
were also asked to work from tonal images of
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faces such as one of Francis Bacon’s studies from
the life mask of William Blake [10]. Amazingly,
Henry’s attempt (figure 7) fails even to recognise
this assemblage of marks as any kind of face,
managing only a very restricted and completely
abstract selection.
Problems with spatial understanding are also
particularly evident in terms of depth (or lack of).
Henry’s drawing always tends towards the
‘Egyptian’ linear profile, but in his geography
contour model (figure 8b) this is stretched into the
third dimension. While every other student in the
group chose to produce a fully three-dimensional
assemblage of curved and concentric contours
(figure 8a), Henry simply visualised a cross
section and gave it thickness, producing two
stairways back-to-back. A second geography
model, representing a severely conceptual waterfall, was made on a flat piece of card which was
then folded twice into two horizontal planes
connected by a vertical, but without any solid
support; again, a 2D visualisation was projected
into 3D.
While NLD children’s problems with depth
perception may show up in optical tests – the
‘stereo butterfly’ for example – such tests reveal
no significant tendency to colour blindness [11].
While the actual nature of right brain deficit in
NLD is usually a matter of speculation, it is clear
that the origins of the problem do not lie in the
visual cortex, where primary processing of visual
input takes place, or in subsequent parallel channels, but at a much more sophisticated level,
where the right hemisphere dominates the higher
function of the ‘distribution of attention within
extra-personal space’ [12]. Moreover, no single
location can be responsible, since representation
is formed by interacting locations: ‘The rapid integration of the activity of distributed brain regions
through reentrant interactions is required for
conscious experience to occur [13].’ The good
news is that, because the brain is a living organism, not a computer, pathways that fail to spark
can be re-energised by appropriate intervention.
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What kind of intervention?
NLD literature, generally showing little awareness
of the role of the art teacher, often advises as a
response an ‘ecological’ strategy of avoidance,
involving appropriate accommodations – avoid
map-reading, teach verbal self-instruction for
analysing and reproducing designs, etc [14]. At
the other extreme, some gung-ho popularisers of
brain-based learning, picking up on Betty
Edwards, claim baldly that ‘anyone with a
“normal” brain (i.e. not genetically or physically
damaged) can learn to draw to good art school
level [15].’ Many of us will have made similar
claims (especially at parents’ evenings!), but we
should not underestimate the difficulties; some
art ‘catch-up’ might conceivably require one-toone tuition beyond our resources, and though we
may know what works with most kids, we might
need to reconsider our strategies for the severely
left-brained.
Even so, normal lesson provision can make a
difference. A second shoe and bottle by Henry
(figure 9) was done one term after the first (see
figure 2). In fact, the battered running shoe was
positioned in front of the bottle, which Henry
drew first – another depth problem – and in the
interim the shape of the bottle has become highly
schematised. Nevertheless, the later drawing
does show some new understanding of the tonal
and reflective qualities of the bottle.
In passing, we should also be aware of alternative forms of intervention based on alternative
definitions of the problem. Great claims are now
made for educational kinesiology (Edu-K or EK),
by which all manner of learning difficulties are
seen to derive from motor coordination problems, and thus to be relieved by appropriate
exercise:
The problems … with NVLDs are basic problems
in perception and in processing those perceptions. The skill of visual perception… is entirely
based upon sensory-motor co-ordination. Spatial
perception is closely related to the visual and
vestibular systems. Thus developmental delay in
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these systems will result in impairment of perception skills. In other words the child has not
physically developed to the stage of handling the
task. EK would work on the physical skills required
to develop the physiology to a level where it is
capable of supporting the physical actions
required to handle the task [16].
Art teachers may want to ponder such claims for
themselves.
A new standing for the art department
The question of appropriate intervention raises
important issues regarding the nature of SEN and
the standing of the art department. School curricula and teaching methods everywhere are heavily
weighted towards left brain activities, and this has
been exaggerated in the UK by ongoing initiatives
in literacy and numeracy. ‘Specific learning difficulty’ in SEN-speak has become virtually
synonymous with dyslexia, and sight impairment
is the only visual defect acknowledged. Art has
been considered within SEN as a form of therapy,
or as a developmental indicator, whereby increasingly sophisticated schemae may reveal growing
maturity [17].
Taking NLD seriously could change all that,
and could give art lessons a valuable diagnostic
role, with observational work as a ‘window’ into
the right-brain. The machinery for school-wide
evaluation already exists; cognitive ability tests
(CATs) – verbal, quantitative and non-verbal –
already used by many schools to pick up
language problems could equally well be used,
symmetrically, to identify non-verbal difficulties.
NferNelson also produce separate verbal, nonverbal and spatial reasoning tests for 6 to 14 year
olds [18]. Whatever the choice, clear comparability between verbal and non-verbal/spatial modes
would be essential.
Doing this would put both SEN and the art
department on something of a learning curve,
requiring a radical shift of thinking about the
nature of special needs. We may feel weary of
scores and statistics, but testing would lend
objectivity and weight to the ‘subjective’ judgements of art teachers.
Learning styles, thinking skills and whole-brain
learning are the current educational buzz, and art
teachers should be ready to take advantage of this.
We must insist that problems with visual awareness are not confined to our subject box, but have
implications across the curriculum, and that such
problems can be identified and responded to. NLD
gives us the leverage to do this.
But is NLD just Asperger’s or mild autism?
Reluctance to acknowledge NLD is sometimes
founded on the suspicion that it is merely
Asperger’s Syndrome under another name [19].
Asperger’s Syndrome/Disorder is recognised
in educational psychology and is generally
acknowledged to be somewhere on the Autistic
Spectrum, i.e. between normality and core
autism. It describes a set of behaviours that are
essentially social in nature:
• Poor social interaction and non-verbal social
skills (eye contact, body language etc.)
• Repetitive behaviour or obsessive interests
Language skills and general intelligence are not
affected.
Though these characteristics have some clear
overlap with the social element of the NLD profile
(above), it is noticeable that there is nothing here
relating to visual/spatial problems, which could
prove an important distinction. (Though note that
obsessive behaviour in Asperger’s can include a
preoccupation with detail or with parts of
objects.) Opinion varies widely, some seeing no
particular tendency towards visual/spatial problems in Asperger’s, while some insist otherwise,
citing the dominance of detail over gestalt.
It may also be worth noting that many children
with Semantic Pragmatic Disorder (SPD), a diagnosis on the Autistic Spectrum related to
difficulties with processing information, are said to
be late in acquiring drawing skills, and may restrict
themselves to copying particular stereotypes.
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Again, literalism and preoccupation with detail are
observed [20]. The close relation now found
between SPD and Asperger’s lends weight to the
argument that NLD and Asperger’s will soon also
be considered as the same elephant ‘viewed’ by
two different blind men, as the fable has it.
It has been suggested that many people on
the Autistic Continuum show either a marked gift
for art or have serious problems with any kind of
drawing, and that this polarity may have some
significance. At the same time, optometrists
consider that the visual problems of many with
core autism derive from poor coordination
between central and peripheral vision, which may
be corrected with lenses [21]. There are some
interesting questions here, but they take us
beyond this study.
Even if NLD and Asperger’s are eventually tied
together, art teachers must insist on the crucial
importance of the visual/spatial, which at present
belongs without ambiguity only in NLD profiles.
Percept and concept
I like some of Henry’s drawings; they are intelligent and have an undeniable ‘outsider’ vigour. For
Betty Edwards, good drawing is based on rightbrain seeing, but this does not mean that the
notion of a purely illusionist art, entirely uninformed by stereotypes, is anything but illusory.
The many primitivist tendencies in 20th century
art – among them the ‘discovery’ of children’s
drawing – consciously lead away from illusionism, and can be seen as a search for varieties of
left-brain schemata. The ‘evolutionist’ theory of
art education suggested that ‘similarity between
the unsophisticated work of children … and that
of primitive people’ must mean that ‘in dealing
with children we are dealing with little primitive
people [22].’ Since it would follow that ‘primitive’
people must be big children, this view has been
rightly discredited.
Yet in the sense that both younger children’s
drawings and the work of most cultures not
derived from the ‘Greek Revolution’ (Gombrich’s
term) are grounded more or less in stereotypes or
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schemata, and so appear more or less leftbrained, some commonality can justifiably be
claimed, provided that we reject evolutionist
explanations and analyse styles within a simultaneous left-right brain continuum, corresponding
broadly to Gombrich’s ‘formula and experience’,
or to Arnheim’s ‘interplay of vision and thought’:
Percept and concept, animating and enlightening
each other, are revealed as two aspects of one
and the same experience [23].
This simultaneity reinvites the old question of why
illusionism should be the exception to the rule in
the history of cultures. But more immediately, it
might also challenge inherited assumptions
about the point at which children may ‘naturally’
develop the urge to move from stereotypes to illusionism in drawing, or from left to right brain
modes. For many years, this was agreed to lie
somewhere between ten years and adolescence
– conveniently coinciding with the transition from
primary to secondary schooling. When teaching
was tailored to fit this assertion, it became selfevidential. Despite the increased role of
observation in today’s QCA KS2 schemes of
work, this notion still carries influence.
While it is obviously undeniable that concept
precedes percept in children’s drawing, our
appreciation of the powerful latency of right brain
skills should oblige us to rethink lazy assumptions
about children’s ability to register observations at
earlier ages.
Acknowledgement
My thanks to Shirley Szwarc, my head of department,
for her comments and encouragement, and to those
who shared insights via the senco email forum and the
Nldline bulletin board, particularly Rosalyn Lord and
Roland Mann.
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References
1. Edwards, B (1982) Drawing on the Right Side
of the Brain. Fontana, pp. 72-5.
13. Edelman, G M & Tononi, G (2001)
Consciousness. How Matter becomes
Imagination. Penguin, p. 70.
2. Ibid. pp. 50-5.
14. Little, L, ‘The Misunderstood Child: the Child
with a Non-verbal Learning Disorder’; Fudge, E S,
‘What is Nonverbal Learning Disorder
Syndrome?’, both at URL:
www.NLDontheweb.org
3. Ibid. pp. 82-93.
4. Gregory, R. L. [Ed] (1987) The Oxford
Companion to the Mind. Oxford University
Press, pp. 740-7.
5. URLs: www.nldline.com,
www.NLDontheweb.org & www.nlda.org,
respectively.
6. Compiled from: ‘Diagnostic criteria’ at URL:
www.nlda.org; Little, L, ‘The Misunderstood
Child: The Child With a Nonverbal Learning
Disorder’; Tanguay, P B, ‘Nonverbal Learning
Disorders: What To Look For’; Kay, M J, ‘NLD
and the School Age Child’; Brace, P, ‘What Are
Nonverbal Learning Disabilities?’; Fudge, E S,
‘What is Nonverbal Learning Disorder
Syndrome?’ – all at URL:
www.NLDontheweb.org
7. Posts by Julie, Lori & Tyger, ‘Visualizing’
thread, May 28 2002, Nldline bulletin board 2 at
URL: www.nldline.com
8. Posts by zrh & katie, ‘Art teaching & NLD/UK situation’ thread, Dec. 9 2002, Nldline bulletin board.
15. Buzan, T & B (2000) The Mind Map Book.
BBC, p. 67.
16. Email to writer from Roland Mann, educational kinesiologist, Jan. 8 2003.
17. See for example some links in ‘Art and
Special Educational Needs’ at URL:
www.tomwilson.com/david/InclusiveCurricula/
art.htm
18. At URL: www.nfer-nelson.co.uk
19. See for example Dinklage, D (2001)
‘Asperger’s Disorder and Nonverbal Learning
Disabilities: How are These Two Disorders
Related to Each Other?’ at URL:
www.NLDontheweb.org
20. Sharp, M, ‘Semantic Pragmatic Disorder’ at
URL: www.hyperlexia.org/sp1.html
21. College of Optometrists, ‘Vision and Autism’
at URL: www.covd.org/art/visionautism.html
9. Posts by Dixie & Kaye, ‘A’s all year — and then
a ‘B’ in Art because of behavior!’ thread, March
29 2001, Nldline bulletin board 2.
22. Tomlinson, R. R. (1947) Children as Artists.
King Penguin, pp. 6-7.
10. Tate Modern, available at URL:
www.tate.org.uk/servlet/AWork?id=683
22. Arnheim, R (1969) Visual Thinking. University
of California Press, p. 273; Gombrich, E. H.
(2002) Art & Illusion. Phaidon, pp. 126-152.
11. Posts by Cindy and cindyp, ‘Color blind?’
thread, April 13 2001, Nldline bulletin board 2;
‘Stereo butterfly test’ at URL: http://veatchinstruments.com/stereobutter.htm
12. Weintraub, S & Mesulam, M in Archive of
Neurology, Vol. 44, No. 6, p. 621.
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