Facilitation instead of inhibition for repeated right-sided events in leftneglect

WHEN two visual events appear consecutively in the same spatial location, b ur response to the second event is slower than that to the first, This inhi bition for repeated events may reflect a bias toward sampling novel locatio ns, a bias useful for exploring the visual space. Patients with right-hemis phere damage and left neglect explore asymmetrically a visual scene. They-a re initially attracted by right-sided items and become stuck to them, being unable to reorient their attention toward the left. Here we show that negl ect patients show facilitation instead of inhibition for repeated events on the right, non-neglected side. Patients without neglect showed normal inhi bition. Our observation may explain why neglect patients' exploration of sp ace cannot extend beyond a few right-sided objects. NeuroReport 10:3353-335 7 (C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.