Common brain networks for distinct deficits in visual neglect. A combined structural and tractography MRI approach

Publication date: Available online 18 October 2017 Source:Neuropsychologia Author(s): Monica N. Toba, Raffaella Migliaccio, Bénédicte Batrancourt, Clémence Bourlon, Christophe Duret, Pascale Pradat-Diehl, Bruno Dubois, Paolo Bartolomeo Visual neglect is a heterogeneous, multi-component syndrome resulting from right hemisphere damage. Neglect patients do not pay attention to events occurring on their left side, and have a poor functional outcome. The intra-hemispheric location of lesions producing neglect is debated, because studies using different methods reported different locations in the grey matter and in the white matter of the right hemisphere. These reported locations show various patterns of overlapping with the fronto-parietal attention networks demonstrated by functional neuroimaging. We explored the anatomical correlates of neglect patients’ performance on distinct tests of neglect. For the first time in neglect anatomy studies, we individually assessed 25 patients with subacute strokes in the right hemisphere, by using a combined structural and diffusion tensor deterministic tractography approach, with separate analyses for each neglect test. The results revealed that lesions in nodes of the ventral attention network (angular and supramarginal gyri) were selectively associated with deficits in performance on all the tests used; damage to other structures correlated with impaired performance on specific tests, such as the bells test (middle and infer...

Source: Neuropsychologia - October 19, 2017 Category: Neurology Source Type: research