Visual search in patients with left visual hemineglect

doi:10.1016/S0079-6123(02)40065-9

Progress in Brain Research

Volume 140, 2002, Pages 395-416

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(02)40065-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

In patients with hemi-spatial neglect eye movement patterns during visual search reflect not only inattention for the contralesional hemi-field, but interacting deficits of multiple visuo-spatial and cognitive functions, even in the ipsilesional hemi-field. Evidence for these deficits is presented from the literature and from saccadic scan-path analysis during feature and conjunction search in 10 healthy subjects and in 10 patients with manifest or recovered left visual neglect due to right-hemispheric stroke. Deficits include (1) a rightward shift of spatial representation, (2) deficient spatial working memory and failure of systematic search strategies, leading to multiple re-fixations, more after frontal lesions, and (3) a reduced spotlight of attention and a deficient pop-out effect of color, more after temporo-parietal lesions.

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Ignoring space around a painful limb? No evidence for a body-related visuospatial attention bias in complex regional pain syndrome
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Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is a disorder of severe chronic pain in one or more limb(s). People with CRPS report unusual perceptions of the painful limb suggesting altered body representations, as well as difficulty attending to their affected limb (i.e., a ‘neglect-like’ attention bias). Altered body representations and attention in CRPS might be related, however, existing evidence is unclear. We hypothesized that if there were a body-related visuospatial attention bias in CRPS, then any attention bias away from the affected side should be larger for or limited to circumstances when the (impaired) body representation is involved in the task versus when this is not the case.
We included 40 people with CRPS, 40 with other limb pain conditions, and 40 pain-free controls. In half of the people with pain, their upper limb was affected, in the other half their lower limb. We administered computerized tasks of spatial attention, including free viewing of images, shape cancellation, temporal order judgement, and dot-probe. The degree to which different versions of each task involved body representation was manipulated by one or more of the following: (1) presenting stimuli nearer versus further away from the body, (2) using body related versus neutral stimuli, and (3) inducing mental rotation of body parts versus no mental rotation. In addition to perceptual judgements, eye movements were recorded as a sensitive index of spatial attention. Bayesian repeated measures analyses were performed.
We found no evidence for a (body-related) visuospatial attention bias in upper limb CRPS. Secondary analyses suggested the presence of a body-related visuospatial attention bias away from the affected side in some participants with lower limb CRPS.
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Patients with spatial neglect show an ipsilesional exploration bias. We developed a gaze-contingent intervention that aims at reducing this bias and tested its effects on visual exploration in healthy participants: During a visual search, stimuli in one half of the search display are removed when the gaze moves into this half. This leads to a relative increase in the exploration of the other half of the search display – the one that can be explored without impediments. In the first experiment, we tested whether this effect transferred to visual exploration during a change detection task (under change blindness conditions), which was the case. In a second experiment, we modified the intervention (to an intermittent application) but the original version yielded more promising results. Thus, in the third experiment, the original version was used to test the longevity of its effects and whether its repeated application produced even stronger results. To this aim, we compared two groups: the first group received the intervention once, the second group repeatedly on three consecutive days. The change detection task was administered before the intervention and at four points in time after the last intervention (directly afterwards, + 1 hour, + 1 day, and +4 days). The results showed long-lasting effects of the intervention, most pronounced in the second group. Here the intervention changed the bias in the visual exploration pattern significantly until the last follow-up. We conclude that the intervention shows promise for the successful application in neglect patients.
Gaze-contingent stimulus removal leads to subsequent changes in overt attentional allocation
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Citation Excerpt :
In neglect patients with frontal rather than parietal lesions, however, hypometric leftward saccades during exploration have been observed (Sprenger et al., 2002). The right bias can be observed during the exploration of natural images (Ptak et al., 2009) as well as during visual search (Sprenger et al., 2002) and is often increased by repeated fixations of targets on the right side during the latter (Husain et al., 2001; Sprenger et al., 2002). The ipsilesional exploration bias in neglect also seems to override the tendency of patients with homonymous hemianopia to compensate for their visual field defect by making more contra- than ipsilesional fixations (Ishiai et al., 1987).
Spatial neglect is a debilitating neurological disorder marked by reduced exploration of contralesional space. We developed an intervention in which eye movements to and within one half of a search display were reduced over the course of several hundred trials. The aim of this study was to determine whether this intervention had an effect on the deployment of attention of healthy participants as a first step towards application in patients. The participants carried out a visual search task during which the stimuli in one half of the search display were removed whenever the participants made eye movements towards it. The stimuli in the other half were unaffected by eye movements. Indeed, this led to a steady relative decrease in fixations within the affected half over the course of the intervention. In five experiments, the performance in different spatial attention paradigms was measured before and after this intervention. In two visual search paradigms (feature and conjunction search), exploration of the affected half decreased compared to the unaffected half. In a Posner task with exogenous cues, a partial effect of the intervention was found. However, an attempt at replicating this effect was not successful. The fifth experiment showed that performance in a line bisection paradigm was not significantly influenced by the intervention. To conclude, the intervention showed the potential to influence the behavior of healthy participants in overt attentional exploration tasks.
Visual exploration of emotional faces in schizophrenia using masks from the Japanese Noh theatre
2019, Neuropsychologia
Studying eye movements during visual exploration is widely used to investigate visual information processing in schizophrenia. Here, we used masks from the Japanese Noh theatre to study visual exploration behavior during an emotional face recognition task and a brightness evaluation control task using the same stimuli.
Eye movements were recorded in 25 patients with schizophrenia and 25 age-matched healthy controls while participants explored seven photos of Japanese Noh masks tilted to seven different angles. Additionally, participants were assessed on seven upright binary black and white pictures of these Noh masks (Mooney-like pictures), seven Upside-down pictures (180° upside-down turned Mooneys), and seven Neutral pictures. Participants either had to indicate whether they had recognized a face and its emotional expression, or they had to evaluate the brightness of the picture (total N = 56 trials).
We observed a clear effect of inclination angle of Noh masks on emotional ratings (p < 0.001) and visual exploration behavior in both groups. Controls made larger saccades than patients when not being able to recognize a face in upside-down Mooney pictures (p < 0.01). Patients also made smaller saccades when exploring pictures for brightness (p < 0.05). Exploration behavior in patients was related to depressive symptom expression during emotional face recognition but not during brightness evaluation.
Our findings suggest that visual exploration behavior in patients with schizophrenia is less flexible than in controls depending on the specific task requirements, specifically when exploring physical aspects of the environment.
Further to the right: Viewing distance modulates attentional asymmetries (‘pseudoneglect’) during visual exploration
2019, Brain and Cognition
Previous studies showed that the small leftward bias found in healthy humans’ spatial judgments of lines (“pseudoneglect”) shifts to the right with increasing distance between stimuli and observer. In this study, we investigated whether such a modulation of attentional asymmetry can also be observed in free visual exploration. Participants freely explored photographs of naturalistic scenes for 7 s in near (60 cm) and far (140 cm) space. After an initial leftward bias, followed by a compensatory rightward bias, gaze positions were significantly more leftward in near compared to far space (around 4 s from scene onset). Our results show that the modulation of attentional asymmetries by viewing distance previously reported for spatial judgments generalizes to free visual exploration, and we revealed the temporal dynamics of these asymmetries by fine-grained eye movement analysis. In contrast, an effect of viewing distance was reduced or absent when eye movements are under strong top-down control, as in systematic serial visual search (Sensitive Negelct Test). Finally, there was no effect of viewing distance in the landmark task (as also reported in a minority of other studies), suggesting that this effect may depend on specific, yet unidentified task characteristics.
The influence of naturalistic, directionally non-specific motion on the spatial deployment of visual attention in right-hemispheric stroke
2016, Neuropsychologia
An impairment of the spatial deployment of visual attention during exploration of static (i.e., motionless) stimuli is a common finding after an acute, right-hemispheric stroke. However, less is known about how these deficits: (a) are modulated through naturalistic motion (i.e., without directional, specific spatial features); and, (b) evolve in the subacute/chronic post-stroke phase. In the present study, we investigated free visual exploration in three patient groups with subacute/chronic right-hemispheric stroke and in healthy subjects. The first group included patients with left visual neglect and a left visual field defect (VFD), the second patients with a left VFD but no neglect, and the third patients without neglect or VFD. Eye movements were measured in all participants while they freely explored a traffic scene without (static condition) and with (dynamic condition) naturalistic motion, i.e., cars moving from the right or left. In the static condition, all patient groups showed similar deployment of visual exploration (i.e., as measured by the cumulative fixation duration) as compared to healthy subjects, suggesting that recovery processes took place, with normal spatial allocation of attention. However, the more demanding dynamic condition with moving cars elicited different re-distribution patterns of visual attention, quite similar to those typically observed in acute stroke. Neglect patients with VFD showed a significant decrease of visual exploration in the contralesional space, whereas patients with VFD but no neglect showed a significant increase of visual exploration in the contralesional space. No differences, as compared to healthy subjects, were found in patients without neglect or VFD. These results suggest that naturalistic motion, without directional, specific spatial features, may critically influence the spatial distribution of visual attention in subacute/chronic stroke patients.

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Visual search in patients with left visual hemineglect

Abstract

Brain Cogn.

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Cortex

Neuroimage

Vision Res.

Curr Biol.

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Vision Res.

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Neuropsychologia

Prog. Neurobiol.

Neuroimage

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Vision Res.

Vision Res.

Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Cognit. Psychol.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Neuroimage

Neuropsychologia

Neuroimage

Neuropsychologia

Vision Res.

Neuropsychologia

Modulating the attentional bias in unilateral neglect: the effects of the strategic set

Exp. Brain Res.

Ocular search during line bisection. The effects of hemi-neglect and hemianopia

Brain

Impaired initiation, but not execution of contralesional saccades in hemispatial neglect

Behav. Neurol.

Mechanisms underlying spatial representation revealed through studies of hemispatial neglect

J. Cogn. Neurosci.

Unilateral neglect in humans

Saccadic reaction times in patients with frontal and parietal lesions

Brain

Cortical substrates supporting visual search in humans

Cereb. Cortex

Preattentive and attentive visual search in individuals with hemispatial neglect

Neuropsychology