What is extinguished in auditory extinction?

Extinction is a frequent sequel of brain damage, whereupon patients disrega rd (extinguish) a contralesional stimulus, and report only the more ipsiles ional stimulus. of a pair of stimuli presented simultaneously. We investiga ted the possibility of a dissociation between the detection and the identif ication of extinguished phonemes. Fourteen right hemisphere damaged patient s with severe auditory extinction were examined using a paradigm that separ ated the localization of stimuli and the identification of their phonetic c ontent. Patients reported the identity of left-sided phonemes, while exting uishing them at the same time. in the traditional sense of the term. This d issociation suggests that auditory extinction is more about acknowledging t he existence of a stimulus in the contralesional hemispace than about the a ctual processing of the stimulus. NeuroReport 11:3059-3062 (C) 2000 Lippinc ott Williams & Wilkins.