Increased Cognitive Load Reveals Unilateral Neglect and Altitudinal Extinction in Chronic Stroke. (21st May 2019) - Andres, Michael
Abstract: Objective : Neuropsychological studies suggest that the ability to compensate for the presence of spatial neglect highly depends on the attentional resources a patient can rely on. The present research aimed to study neglect in situations where attentional resources are limited due to multitasking.Method : We examined two patients more than 3 years after a right-hemispheric stroke. Both had received neuropsychological rehabilitation for left neglect and did not show any impairment in standard tests. We used a dual-task paradigm combining a peripheral target detection task with a central shape recognition task. Peripheral targets could appear in left/right positions but also in lower/upper positions.Results : In patient #1, dual-task condition exacerbated left neglect and extinction. Patient #2 did not show any sign of neglect along the horizontal axis, but omitted half of the lower targets when they were presented simultaneously with upper targets under dual-task condition. This behavior reflects altitudinal extinction as the detection of single targets appearing either in upper or lower position was preserved.Conclusion : The present findings show that dual-tasking is a sensitive tool for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of spatial attention deficits, which are often overlooked by standard methods, especially in chronic stage. ( JINS, 2019, 25, 644–653)