Vertical Neglect

描述（由申请人提供）： 大脑接收更多的信息，它可以同时充分处理。大脑选择处理哪些信息的方法被称为注意力。例如，当你阅读这篇摘要时，你可能正在注意这一页上的文字，而没有感觉到你的脚在你的左脚鞋里，但现在你肯定意识到了这一点。我们和其他实验室先前的研究表明，大脑的损伤以及衰老可以改变我们在空间上分配注意力的方式，但这些研究大多数是研究左右空间注意的分配，很少有研究垂直注意。在一项初步研究中，我们发现，健康的受试者似乎有一个向上的attenional偏见，似乎这种偏见主要是由右半球介导的。我们的首要目标之一是了解哪些神经心理学因素会影响这种偏见。 例如，右半球似乎在调节整体注意力方面占主导地位，而左半球则在调节焦点注意力方面占主导地位。如果我们通过呈现实线与字符垂直线来改变注意力需求（全局与焦点），这种向上的偏差会发生什么？此外，我们更关注我们首先看到的东西，因为我们经常从上到下扫描，这个扫描方向可能会影响垂直注意力的分配。为了了解扫描的影响，我们将让参与者从上到下或从下到上扫描实线，并将线条一分为二。 许多研究表明，随着年龄的增长，大脑右半球的功能下降，这种下降可能影响注意的空间分配。例如，年轻人的左半脑空间偏向随着年龄的增长而减少甚至逆转，我们研究的另一个目标是倾斜，如果随着年龄的增长，向上注意力偏向减少。我们将通过让老年人和年轻人进行垂直线平分来检验这一假设。 我们已经报道了颞枕叶底部（腹侧）的双侧中风会导致向上注意力的减少，现在我们想知道单侧右半球（与左半球相比）中风是否会引起垂直注意力偏差的改变，以及底部（腹侧）的损伤是否会导致与顶部（背侧）顶枕叶损伤不同的变化。我们也将这些垂直线放置在正中矢状面的左侧和右侧，以了解半球空间和病变部位之间是否存在相互作用。将性能与老化研究中评估的年龄匹配对照进行比较。 空间注意力的改变可能是残疾的主要原因。现在有几种康复方法可以帮助纠正水平（右-左）空间注意力障碍，这些方法可以修改为治疗垂直注意力障碍，但首先我们必须了解障碍的类型和神经机制，这些是本提案的目标。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The brain receives more information that it can simultaneously fully process. The means by which th brain selects which information to process is called attention. For example, while reading this absract you are probably attending to the words on this page and do not feel your foot in your left shoe, bt now you are most certainly aware of it. Prior studies from our and other laboratories have revealed tha injury to the brain as well as aging can alter the means by which we spatially allocate our attention, butmost of these studies have studied the allocation of right versus left spatial attention and few have studid vertical attention. In a pilot study, we found that healthy subjects appear to have an upward attenional bias and it appears that this bias is primarily mediated by the right hemisphere. One of our first oals is to learn what neuropsychological factors may influence this bias. For example, the right hemisphere appears to be dominant for mediating global attention and the lef, focal attention. If we alter attentional demands (global versus focal) by presenting solid versus charactr vertical lines what will happen to this upward bias? Further, we attend more to that which we see frst and since we often scan from top to bottom, this scanning direction may influence the allocation ofvertical attention. To learn the influence of scanning, we will have participants scan solid lines from top o bottom or bottom to top and bisect the lines. Many studies have revealed that with aging there is a reduction of right hemispheric function and tis age related decrement may influence the spatial allocation of attention. For example, young people havea left hemispatial bias that decreases or even reverses with aging and another goal of our study is to lean if with aging there is a decreased upward attentional bias. We will test this hypothesis by having oldr versus younger participants perform vertical line bisections. We have reported that bilateral strokes of the bottom (ventral) portion of the temporal-occipital lbes cause a decrease in upward attention and now we want to learn if unilateral right (versus left) hemispher strokes can induce an alteration of vertical attentional bias, and if bottom (ventral) lesions caus different changes compared to more top (dorsal) parietal-occipital lesions. We will also place thes vertical lines to the left and right of the midsagittal plane to learn if there is an interaction btween hemispace and lesion locus. Performances will be compared to age-matched controls assessed in the aging study. Alteration of spatial attention can be a major cause of disability. There are now several rehabilittion methods that can help to correct horizontal (right-left) disorders of spatial attention and these culd be modified to treat disorders of vertical attention, but first we must learn the types of disorders ad the neurological mechanisms and these are the goals of this proposal.