title: Disorganized behavior on Link's cube test is sensitive to right hemispheric frontal lobe damage in stroke patients.
abstract: One of Luria's favorite neuropsychological tasks for challenging frontal lobe functions was Link's cube test (LCT). The LCT is a cube construction task in which the subject must assemble 27 small cubes into one large cube in such a manner that only the painted surfaces of the small cubes are visible. We computed two new LCT composite scores, the constructive plan composite score, reflecting the capability to envisage a cubical-shaped volume, and the behavioral (dis-) organization composite score, reflecting the goal-directedness of cube construction. Voxel-based lesion-behavior mapping (VLBM) was used to test the relationship between performance on the LCT and brain injury in a sample of stroke patients with right hemisphere damage (N = 32), concentrated in the frontal lobe. We observed a relationship between the measure of behavioral (dis-) organization on the LCT and right frontal lesions. Further work in a larger sample, including left frontal lobe damage and with more power to detect effects of right posterior brain injury, is necessary to determine whether this observation is specific for right frontal lesions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Hannover Medical School Hannover, Germany ; Cognitive Neurology, Technische Universität Braunschweig Braunschweig, Germany.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kopp
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neurology, Technische Universität Braunschweig Braunschweig, Germany ; Department of Neurology, Braunschweig Hospital Braunschweig, Germany.
authors.forename: Nina
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rösser
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neurology, Technische Universität Braunschweig Braunschweig, Germany ; Department of Neurology, Klinik Niedersachsen Bad Nenndorf, Germany.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tabeling
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Klinik Niedersachsen Bad Nenndorf, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans Jörg
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Stürenburg
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuropsychology, Center of Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Bianca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: de Haan
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuropsychology, Center of Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany ; Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina Columbia, SC, USA.
authors.forename: Hans-Otto
authors.initials: HO
authors.lastname: Karnath
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neurology, Technische Universität Braunschweig Braunschweig, Germany ; Department of Neurology, Braunschweig Hospital Braunschweig, Germany.
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wessel
keywords: Link's cube test; executive function; frontal lobe; problem solving; right hemisphere damage; spatial behavior