Visuospatial attention

The link between PAC and visuospatial attention has been confirmed by recordings in monkeys (Robinson et ah, 1995). Neurons in PAC area 7a increased their firing, depending on whether the animal attended to the region of space where the stimulus occurred. Parietal neurons exhibit a variety of complex, attention-related responses in monkeys performing the Posner task. Neurons in area 7a also appear to create world-referenced maps of visual space, and they project this information to the dorsolateral PFC, which uses this information to effectively guide behavior. 

The posterior multimodal association area is located at the junction of the parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. It pools and integrates somatic, auditory, and visual stimuli for complex perceptual processing. As such, this area is involved primarily with visuospatial localization, language, and attention. Lesions here interfere with awareness of one s body position and of the space in which it moves as well as the ability to integrate and make sense of elements of a visual scene. In other words, these patients have normal visual acuity but cannot focus on an object of interest. 

Frontal and subcortical lacunar infarcts typically affect attention, language, visuospatial function, and motor programming (Babikian et al. 1990). Compared to patients with Alzheimer s disease, those with vascular dementia show better orientation, recall, and language ability. On... 

On each experimental day, the Repeatable Battery for Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) was administered (Randolph, 1998). It assesses attention, immediate memory, visuospatial/ construction, language, and delayed memory (Gold et al., 1999). Schizophrenics score significantly lower than normal subjects the decrement is correlated with diminished psychosocial status. Compared to placebo, the DMXB-A significantly improved overall performance and specifically improved function on the Attention subscale. Inhibition of the P50 response to repeated stimulus, the sensory gating measure that led to identification of nicotinic receptor deficits in schizophrenia, also improved (Olincy et al., 2006). 

Low-exposure group showed decrements in visuospatial and visuomotor function (block design, memory for design, Santa Ana dexterity), attention (digit symbol, digit span), verbal comprehension (similarities) associated with... 

---