Visual attention in patients with intracranial arachnoid cysts.
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.
Gundersen
Hilde
H
Dept. of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, 5021, Bergen, Norway.
Helland
Christian A
CA
Raeder
Maria Baroy
MB
Hugdahl
Kenneth
K
Wester
Knut
K
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*