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ABSTRACT: Objective
To determine whether behavioral dissociations and interactions occur between the attentional functions-alerting, orienting, and conflict resolution-depending upon stroke location and to determine the approximate proportion of patients who can be classified into 1 of these 3 anatomical networks.Methods
We recruited 110 anatomically unselected acute stroke patients and 62 age-matched controls. Subjects underwent the attention network test (ANT), which provides a measure of each attention type. Their performance was related to lesion anatomy on MRI using a voxel-lesion mapping approach.Results
Patients as a whole performed poorer than controls, but there were no group differences in the size of attentional effects. Specific deficits in 1 of the 3 ANT-tested functions were found in the following lesion locations: alerting deficiency with bilateral anteromedial thalamus and upper brainstem (17% of patients); orienting impairment with right pulvinar and right temporoparietal cortex (15%); conflict resolution with bilateral prefrontal and premotor areas (23%). Lesions to right frontoparietal regions also modified interactions among the 3 types of attention.Conclusions
More than half of all stroke patients can be expected to have a lesion location classifiable into 1 of the 3 principal attention networks. Our results have potential implications for therapy personalization in focal brain diseases including stroke.
SUBMITTER: Rinne P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3908461 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature