Article

Neglect is defined as the failure to attend and to orient to the contralesional
side of space. A horizontal bias towards the right visual field is a classical
finding in patients who suffered from a right-hemispheric stroke. The vertical
dimension of spatial attention orienting has only sparsely been investigated so
far. The aim of this study was to investigate the specificity of this vertical
bias by means of a search task, which taps a more pronounced top-down attentional
component. Eye movements and behavioural search performance were measured in
thirteen patients with left-sided neglect after right hemispheric stroke and in
thirteen age-matched controls. Concerning behavioural performance, patients found
significantly less targets than healthy controls in both the upper and lower left
quadrant. However, when targets were located in the lower left quadrant, patients
needed more visual fixations (and therefore longer search time) to find them,
suggesting a time-dependent vertical bias.
CI - Copyright (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS