Attention and spatial cognition: Neural and anatomical substrates of visual neglect (original) (raw)

It is now widely accepted that visuospatial functions are not distributed symmetrically between the hemispheres. This was initially observed in brain-damaged patients in whom spatial deficits were most often associated with damage to the right hemisphere as opposed to the left hemisphere 1941 . In 1962, He ´caen [2] investigated the occurrence of spatial deficits in a large group of patients with unilateral post-Rolandic lesions. Spatial neglect, along with the inability to orient themselves on a map, loss of topographic memory, constructional apraxia and also dressing apraxia were found more often in patients with right hemisphere lesions. Since then, advances in brain imaging methods, in particular functional MRI, diffusion MRI, and transcranial and intracerebral magnetic stimulation have refined our understanding of anatomo-clinical relationships. In this article, we will review the neuroanatomical correlates of visuospatial attention and spatial neglect.