Divided attention years after severe closed head injury: The effect of dependencies between the subtasks

Lesions of white matter which connects distant brain areas are characterist ic for closed head injury (CHI). It was predicted that this impairs divided attention only if dependent subtasks are used which require communication between corresponding brain processes. Fourteen chronic severe CHI patients (mean age 42 years) and 14 healthy controls, matched on age, gender, and e ducation, participated in an experiment on divided attention. A typical lef t hemisphere task and a typical right hemisphere task must be simultaneousl y performed in a condition where they are completely independent and in con ditions with dependencies between the tasks. Only in the dependent conditio ns the CHI group showed poor divided attention performance. (C) 2001 Academ ic Press.