title: Visual attention in patients with intracranial arachnoid cysts.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate whether intracranial arachnoid cysts (AC) compromise visual attention and if so, whether surgical cyst decompression leads to improvement in visual attention performance.
  
  
  METHODS
  The experiments were carried out on 27 patients with temporal (n=21) or frontal (n=6) AC, and 27 healthy control subjects. All subjects were tested with two different visual attention paradigms. Patients were tested one day before and a minimum of 3 months after the surgery, with the same test-retest interval for the controls.
  
  
  RESULTS
  AC impair both automatic and effortful attention. These attention impairments were significantly improved after surgery, also when controlling for learning and practice effects from pre- to post-surgery testing. Closer analysis showed that these effects were carried by patients with right hemisphere cysts for impairment in shift of attention, and by patients with a left hemisphere cyst for visual search.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  AC may impair visual attention. Cyst location may be of importance for the development of these attention deficits, as there were significant differences between patients with right hemisphere cysts and those with left hemisphere cysts. This dyscognition appears to be reversible following surgical decompression. Surgical decompression of AC may thus relieve not only clinical symptoms and complaints, but cognitive impairments as well.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, 5021, Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Hilde
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gundersen
authors.forename: Christian A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Helland
authors.forename: Maria Baroy
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Raeder
authors.forename: Kenneth
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hugdahl
authors.forename: Knut
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wester
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016080:Arachnoid Cysts / Q000150:complications* / Q000601:surgery; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000209:etiology* / Q000601:surgery; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*