title: Early sensory processing in right hemispheric stroke patients with and without extinction.
abstract: While extinction is most commonly viewed as an attentional disorder and not as a consequence of a failure to process contralesional sensory information, it has been speculated that early sensory processing of contralesional targets in extinction patients might not be fully normal. We used a masked visuo-motor response priming paradigm to study the influence of both contralesional and ipsilesional peripheral subliminal prime stimuli on central target performance, allowing us to compare the strength of the early sensory processing associated with these prime stimuli between right brain damaged patients with and without extinction as well as healthy elderly subjects. We found that the effect of an informative subliminal prime in the left contralesional visual field on central target performance was significantly reduced in both right brain damaged patients with and without extinction. The results suggest that a low-level early sensory deterioration of the neural representation for contralesional prime stimuli is a general consequence of right hemispheric brain damage unrelated to the presence or absence of extinction. This suggests that the presence of a spatial bias against contralesional information is not sufficient to elicit extinction. For extinction to occur, this spatial bias might need to be accompanied by a pathological (non-directional) reduction of attentional capacity.
authors.affiliation: Center of Neurology, Division of Neuropsychology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: bianca.de-haan@klinikum.uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Bianca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: de Haan
authors.affiliation: Center of Neurology, Division of Neuropsychology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Tine
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stoll
authors.affiliation: Center of Neurology, Division of Neuropsychology, 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
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D020521:Stroke / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Extinction; Right hemisphere; Spatial attention; Stroke; Subliminal perception