SPATIAL ATTENTION DEFICITS IN HUMANS - A COMPARISON OF SUPERIOR PARIETAL AND TEMPORAL-PARIETAL JUNCTION LESIONS

Although clinical evidence of spatial attention deficits, such as negl ect and extinction, is typically associated with lesions of the right temporal-parietal junction, recent evidence has suggested an important role for the superior parietal lobe. Two groups of patients, selected for lesions at the temporal-parietal junction including the superior temporal gyrus (TPJ group), or for lesions involving the parietal but not the superior temporal region (PAR group), performed cued-target de tection tasks in 2 experiments. An extinction-like response time patte rn was found for the TPJ but not the PAR group. In addition, both grou ps were able to use expectancy information, in the form of cue predict iveness, suggesting that separate mechanisms mediate exogenous and end ogenous processes during attention shifts.