title: Neuropsychology of selective attention and magnetic cortical stimulation.
abstract: Informed volunteers were asked to perform different neuropsychological tests involving selective attention under control conditions and during transcranial magnetic cortical stimulation. The tests chosen involved the recognition of a specific letter among different letters (verbal test) and the search for three different spatial orientations of an appendage to a square (visuo-spatial test). For each test the total time taken and the error rate were calculated. Results showed that cortical stimulation did not cause a worsening in performance. Moreover, magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe neither modified completion time in both verbal and visuo-spatial tests nor changed error rate. In contrast, magnetic stimulation of the pre-frontal area induced a significant reduction in the performance time of both the verbal and visuo-spatial tests always without an increase in the number of errors. The experimental findings underline the importance of the pre-frontal area in performing tasks requiring a high level of controlled attention and suggest the need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach towards the study of neurone/mind interface mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Fisiologia umana, Università di Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sabatino
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Di Nuovo
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sardo
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Abbate
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: La Grutta
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology