UNILATERAL SPATIAL NEGLECT RECOVERY AFTER SEQUENTIAL STROKES

We describe a patient who had sequential strokes in both hemispheres w ith a severe unilateral spatial neglect after a first right-sided pari etal infarct and abrupt disappearance of the neglect after a second le ft-sided frontal infarct. The first lesion involved the caudalmost rig ht angular gyrus (area 39), whereas the second lesion involved the lef t frontal eye field (area 8) and surrounding cortex. Those two cortica l areas are assumed to have a pivotal role in modulating both shifts o f attention within extrapersonal space and saccadic eye movements thro ugh their connections with subcortical structures, in particular, supe rior colliculi and thalamic nuclei. Our case supports the existence of a distributed anatomic-functional network in subserving directed spat ial attention.