Roza M. Umarova1, Dorothee Saur2, Christoph Kaller1, Magnus-Sebastian Vry1, Volkmar Glauche2, Irina Mader3, Cornelius Weiller1
1Department of Neurology, University Medical Center , Freiburg, Germany; 2Department of Neurology, University Medical Center, Freiburg, Germany; 3Department of Neuroradilogy, University Medical Center , Freiburg, Germany
We aimed to explore what distinguishes patients with and without neglect after acute stroke in the right hemisphere using fMRI with visuospatial attention task. Patients without neglect showed spared function of key attentional centers in the left hemisphere and post-Rolandic structures in the right hemisphere. Neglect patients presented a down-regulation in most of attentional centers, while the infrequent left targets detection correlated with involvement of the left hemisphere structures. Thus, the spared function of the attention relevant regions in non-neglect patients enabled the modulation of the right primary and association visual areas with a subsequent left targets detection.
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