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Data suggest right-hemisphere dominance for attention.Right-hemisphere lesions reduce attentional capacity that may manifest as neglect or extinction.Attention can be assessed with the Face-Hand Test where touch on the face may extinguish simultaneous touch on the hand.Extinction ipsilateral to unilateral lesions suggests abnormal attention to ipsilateral hemispace.We tested patients with left-and right-hemisphere lesions without neglect and right-hemisphere lesions with neglect with stimuli applied exclusively ipsilateral to lesions.In experiment 1,stimuli were applied in face-hand combinations.In experiment 2,the Face-Hand Test was ranked from 0(no extinction)to 7(marked extinction)using progressively greater stimulation.In both experiments,right-hemisphere patients with neglect made significantly more errors than left-hemisphere patients without neglect.These data support models of bidirectional right- hemisphere attentional dominance. |
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