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Connecting the damage
DOI: 10.1038/nn1574
Some patients who suffer a right-hemisphere stroke develop a syndrome called
'neglect', in which they ignore the entire left side of their bodies and of
the objects around them. This deficit is caused by abnormal activation in
intact areas of the brain connected to the damaged areas, rather than by the
original damage itself, reports a paper in the November issue of Nature
Neuroscience.
Maurizio Corbetta and colleagues scanned neglect patients using
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) immediately after the stroke,
when they were impaired at detecting targets on their left side, and again
many months later, when they were much better at the task. The authors found
that an undamaged brain area in the right hemisphere did not activate at all
in the first scan, but activated strongly later on, when the patients'
performance was better. This area, the dorsal parietal cortex, is normally
involved in shifting attention, and is connected to the temporo-parietal
junction and the prefrontal cortex, areas which are damaged in spatial
neglect. There results show that behavioral deficits might result not from
actual damage to a brain area, but from alterations in activity in brain
areas connected to the damaged region.
Author contact:
Maurizio Corbetta (Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO,
USA)
Tel: +1 314 747 0426; E-mail: [email protected]
Additional contact for comment on paper:
Michael Posner (University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA)
Tel: +1 212 541 346 4939, E-mail: [email protected]
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