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Research recently showed that boredom proneness was associated with increased social distancing rule-breaking in a sample collected early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we explore data collected early in the pandemic to examine what factors might drive this relation. We focus on political affiliation. Given the functional account of boredom as a call to action, we hypothesized that this urge to act may drive individuals towards outlets replete with symbolic value (e.g., ideology, identity). In addition, given the politicization of some social distancing rules (e.g., mask wearing), we explored whether those who adhere to strong political ideologies—particularly conservative ideologies—would be more likely to rule-break. Moderation analyses indicated that boredom proneness and social (but not fiscal) conservatism were indeed predictive of rule-breaking. These results highlight the need for both clear messaging emphasizing the strength of communal identity and action (i.e., that “We are all in this together”) and for interventions that emphasize shared collective values in contexts that appeal directly to social conservatives.

Two experiments investigated what eye movements can reveal about how we process surprising information and how we update mental models in dynamic and unstructured environments. Participants made saccades to visual targets presented one at a time, radially, around an invisible perimeter. Target locations were normally distributed and shifted at an unannounced point during the task. Trials following the shift were considered surprising and unexpected. These unexpected and surprising events prompted the need to update. Slower saccadic latencies were observed for surprising/unexpected events, perhaps indicative of the need to reorient attention to the unexpected target location. Longer dwell times were observed for events that signaled a change in the distribution. These data show that eye movement metrics provide a reliable indicator of mental model updating when contingencies change even in the absence of explicit change signals.

Mindfulness based interventions (MBI) are becoming increasingly popular. Given their nature (i.e., training of focused attention and cognitive control), efforts have been made to study their potential benefits to different aspects of cognition, resulting in mixed results. In light of the inconsistent findings, concerns regarding the methodological quality of such studies, and recent surge in randomized controlled trials of mindfulness interventions, we conducted a meta-analysis focused on MBIs effects on attention, working-memory and executive control in healthy adults. We limited the included studies to randomized controlled trials of mindfulness-based interventions in healthy adults, resulting in 27 included studies (N = 1632). We found an overall effect of g = 0.2, with significant effects on attention (g = 0.18) and executive control (g = 0.18), but not on working-memory. Moderation analyses showed that the type of control group included in the study or the dosage (total hours of intervention) did not modulate these effects, but the number of in-class sessions did: the more sessions, the stronger the effect. MBIs have limited positive effects on attention and executive control in healthy adults. More studies are needed to address how participants’ motivation may account for this effect, and clarify whether the smaller effects we found are due to our focus on healthy adults, or due to overestimation of effect sizes in previous meta-analyses.

We examined the hypothesis that boredom is likely to occur when opportunity costs are high; that is, when there is a high potential value of engaging in activities other than the researcher-assigned activity. To this end, participants were either placed in a room with many possible affordances (e.g. a laptop, puzzle, etc.; affordances condition; n = 121), or they were ushered into an empty room (control condition; n = 107). In both conditions participants were instructed to entertain themselves with only their thoughts (hence, participants in the affordances condition were to refrain from engaging with the available options). As predicted, participants in the affordances condition reported higher levels of boredom compared with those in the control condition. Results suggest that under some conditions, environments that afford alternative activities may be more boring than those that are void of such activities.

Morphological features of the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in late childhood and early adolescence may provide important clues as to the developmental etiology of clinical conditions such as obesity. Body composition measurements and structural brain imaging were performed on 11 226 youth at baseline (age 9 or 10 years) and follow-up (age 11 or 12 years). Baseline morphological features of the lateral PFC were examined as predictors of body composition. Findings revealed reliable associations between middle frontal gyrus volume, thickness and surface area and multiple indices of body composition. These findings were consistent across both time points and remained significant after covariate adjustment. Cortical thicknesses of the inferior frontal gyrus and lateral orbitofrontal cortex were also reliable predictors. Morphology effects on body composition were mediated by performance on a non-verbal reasoning task. Modest but reliable moderation effects were observed with respect to environmental self-regulatory demand after controlling for sex, race/ethnicity, income and methodological variables. Overall findings suggest that PFC morphology is a reliable predictor of body composition in early adolescence, as mediated through select cognitive functions and partially moderated by environmental characteristics.

Early adolescence is a critical period for eating behaviors as children gain autonomy around food choice and peer influences increase in potency. From a neurodevelopmental perspective, significant structural changes take place in the prefrontal cortex during this time, including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which is involved in socially contextualized decision-making. We examined the morphological features of the OFC in relation to food choice in a sample of 10 309 early adolescent children from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. Structural parameters of the OFC and insula were examined for relationships with two important aspects of food choice: limiting the consumption of fast/fried food and maximizing the consumption of nutritious foods. Raw, partially adjusted and fully adjusted models were evaluated. Findings revealed that a larger surface area of the lateral OFC was associated with higher odds of limiting fast/fried food consumption in raw [odds ratio (OR) = 1.07, confidence interval (CI): 1.02, 1.12, P = 0.002, PFDR = 0.012], partially adjusted (OR = 1.11, CI: 1.03, 1.19, P = 0.004, PFDR = 0.024) and fully adjusted models (OR = 1.11, CI: 1.03, 1.19, P = 0.006, PFDR = 0.036). In contrast, a larger insula volume was associated with lower odds of maximizing healthy foods in raw (OR = 0.94, CI: 0.91, 0.97, P

Boredom, the unfulfilled desire to be engaged in a satisfying mental activity, is an aversive state characterized by poor self-regulation. There is ample evidence that both state and trait boredom are associated with failures of attention in both experimental and everyday settings. The neural correlates of boredom, however, remain underexplored. We recorded electroencephalographic signal from 83 participants during a resting state and while performing a go/no-go task. We found a negative correlation between trait boredom proneness and power in the alpha and theta bands during the resting state. Furthermore, higher levels of task-induced boredom were associated with reduced amplitudes for the P3 and error-related negativity event-related potentials. Increased commission error rates were also associated with higher levels of task-induced boredom. We conclude that state and trait boredom are associated with inadequate engagement of attentional resources.

Children until the age of five are only able to reverse an ambiguous figure when they are informed about the second interpretation. In two experiments, we examined whether children’s difficulties would extend to a continuous version of the ambiguous figures task. Children (Experiment 1: 66 3- to 5-year olds; Experiment 2: 54 4- to 9-year olds) and adult controls saw line drawings of animals gradually morph—through well-known ambiguous figures—into other animals. Results show a relatively late developing ability to recognize the target animal, with difficulties extending beyond preschool-age. This delay can neither be explained with improvements in theory of mind, inhibitory control, nor individual differences in eye movements. Even the best achieving children only started to approach adult level performance at the age of 9, suggesting a fundamentally different processing style in children and adults. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00426-019-01278-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Visual working memory (VWM) involves the encoding and maintenance of visual information over time, with the requirement that object features be accurately bound to spatial locations. We and others have shown that damage to the right hemisphere leads to impaired spatial working memory. Here, we test the notion that right brain damage (RBD) may have consequences for domain general VWM. We had eight RBD patients and a group of healthy control participants perform a VWM task under different loads (1 to 3 items to recall) and spatial competition (high vs. low). All participants were asked to remember the colour of target items presented on the right side of space. Patients showed impaired encoding of information evident in poor precision of memory representations and increased guessing rates even at a set size of only one item. Our data suggests that VWM capacity is severely limited following RBD. Although five of the eight patients presented with neglect, it is not clear whether this deficit in VWM is unique to the syndrome. We suggest that future work should directly pit attention and VWM demands against one another in the same patients to determine whether the confluence of deficits in these domains is the critical determinant of the neglect syndrome. Regardless of the implications for the neglect syndrome, however, our data show that VWM deficits in RBD patients extend into non-spatial feature space.

In a constantly changing environment we must adapt to both abrupt and gradual changes to incoming information. Previously, we demonstrated that a distributed network (including the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex) was active when participants updated their initial representations (e.g., it's a cat) in a gradually morphing picture task (e.g., now it's a rabbit; Stöttinger et al., 2015). To shed light on whether these activations reflect the proactive decisions to update or perceptual uncertainty, we introduced two additional conditions. By presenting picture morphs twice we controlled for uncertainty in perceptual decision making. Inducing an abrupt shift in a third condition allowed us to differentiate between a proactive decision in uncertainty-driven updating and a reactive decision in surprise-based updating. We replicated our earlier result, showing the robustness of the effect. In addition, we found activation in the anterior insula (bilaterally) and the mid frontal area/ACC in all three conditions, indicative of the importance of these areas in updating of all kinds. When participants were naïve as to the identity of the second object, we found higher activations in the mid-cingulate cortex and cuneus – areas typically associated with task difficulty, in addition to higher activations in the right TPJ most likely reflecting the shift to a new perspective. Activations associated with the proactive decision to update to a new interpretation were found in a network including the dorsal ACC known to be involved in exploration and the endogenous decision to switch to a new interpretation. These findings suggest a general network commonly engaged in all types of perceptual decision making supported by additional networks associated with perceptual uncertainty or updating provoked by either proactive or reactive decision making.

The current study represents the first comprehensive examination of spatial, temporal and sustained attention following cerebellar damage. Results indicated that, compared to controls, cerebellar damage resulted in a larger cueing effect at the longest SOA – possibly reflecting a slowed the onset of inhibition of return (IOR) during a reflexive covert attention task, and reduced the ability to detect successive targets during an attentional blink task. However, there was little evidence to support the notion that cerebellar damage disrupted voluntary covert attention or the sustained attention to response task (SART). Lesion overlay data and supplementary voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) analyses indicated that impaired performance on the reflexive covert attention and attentional blink tasks were related to damage to Crus II of the left posterior cerebellum. In addition, subsequent analyses indicated our results are not due to either general motor impairments or to damage to the deep cerebellar nuclei. Collectively these data demonstrate, for the first time, that the same cerebellar regions may be involved in both spatial and temporal visual attention.

In order to survive in a complex, noisy and constantly changing environment we need to categorize the world (e.g., Is this food edible or poisonous?) and we need to update our interpretations when things change. How does our brain update when object categories change from one to the next? We investigated the neural correlates associated with this updating process. We used event-related fMRI while people viewed a sequence of images that morphed from one object (e.g., a plane) to another (e.g., a shark). All participants were naïve as to the identity of the second object. The point at which participants 'saw' the second object was unpredictable and uncontaminated by any dramatic or salient change to the images themselves. The moment when subjective perceptual representations changed activated a circumscribed network including the anterior insula, medial and inferior frontal regions and inferior parietal cortex. In a setting where neither the timing nor nature of the visual transition was predictable, this restricted cortical network signals the time of updating a perceptual representation. The anterior insula and mid-frontal regions (including the ACC) were activated not only at the actual time when change was reported, but also immediately before, suggesting that these areas are also involved in processing alternative options after a mismatch has been detected.

Boredom is a common experience associated with a range of negative outcomes. Debate remains as to whether boredom should be considered a high or low arousal state. We employed passages of text to induce either boredom or interest and probed self-reported levels of boredom, arousal, and restlessness. Results replicated known associations between mind-wandering and state boredom (i.e., mind-wandering was highest for the boredom mood induction). Reports of sleepiness (a proxy for arousal level) were highest for the boring induction. While restlessness was not different for the boring and interesting inductions when they were performed first, restlessness was significantly higher for the boredom induction when it was experienced last. We discuss these results within the context of the debate regarding boredom and arousal.

The ability to accurately build and update mental representations of our environment depends on our ability to integrate information over a variety of time scales and detect changes in the regularity of events. As such, the cognitive mechanisms that support model building and updating are likely to interact with those involved in working memory (WM). To examine this, we performed three experiments that manipulated WM demands concurrently with the need to attend to regularities in other stimulus properties (i.e., location and shape). That is, participants completed a prediction task while simultaneously performing an n-back WM task with either no load or a moderate load. The distribution of target locations (Experiment 1) or shapes (Experiments 2 and 3) included some level of probabilistic regularity, which, unbeknown to participants, changed abruptly within each block. Moderate WM load hampered the ability to benefit from target regularities and to adapt to changes in those regularities (i.e., the prediction task). This was most pronounced when both prediction and WM requirements shared the same target feature. Our results show that representational updating depends on free WM resources in a domain-specific fashion.

In many research domains, researchers have employed gradually morphing pictures to study perception under ambiguity. Despite their inherent utility, only a limited number of stimulus sets are available, and those sets vary substantially in quality and perceptual complexity. Here we present normative data for 40 morphing picture series. In all sets, line drawings of pictures of common objects are morphed over 15 iterations into a completely different object. Objects are either morphed from an animate to an inanimate object (or vice versa) or morphed within the animate and inanimate object categories. These pictures, together with the normative naming data presented here, will be of value for research on a diverse range of questions, from perceptual processing to decision making.

The current study examined the influence of redundant stimulus features on our ability to build and update representations of our environment. We hypothesized that our ability to process redundant spatial features would speed our ability to adapt to changing nonspatial regularities. Using a computerized version of the children's game “rock–paper–scissors”, undergraduates were instructed to win as often as possible against a computer opponent. The computer's plays were repeating sequences of five choices that were presented either with spatial regularity (i.e., “rock” would always appear on the left, “paper” in the middle, and “scissors” on the right) or without spatial regularity (i.e., the items were equally likely to appear in any of the three locations). Once participants learned a sequence, the computer switched to a different sequence without participants being informed that a switch had occurred. Redundant spatial regularity improved a participant's ability both to learn sequences of plays and to update their plays to reflect new computer sequences. Our results suggest that our perceptual system is sensitive to redundant spatial stimulus features and that this information can improve learning and updating.

To explore how model building adapts to changing environments, we had participants play "rock-paper-scissors" against a computer that played a frequency bias or a player-dependent bias and then switched. Participants demonstrated their use of prior experience in how quickly they recognized and exploited changes in the computer's play strategy; in general, the more similar the strategies, the more efficient the updating. These findings inform our understanding of previously reported updating impairments in right-brain damaged patients.

Boredom proneness has been linked to various forms of cognitive and affective dysregulation including poor self-control and mind-wandering (MW), as well as depression and aggression. As such, understanding boredom and the associated cognitive and affective components of the experience, represents an important first step in combatting the consequences of boredom for psychological well-being. We surveyed 1928 undergraduate students on measures of boredom proneness, self-control, MW, depression and aggression to investigate how these constructs were related. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that self-control operated as a strong negative predictor of boredom proneness. Finally, when controlling for age and self-control, we observed large decreases in the magnitudes of the relationships between boredom proneness and our other measures of interest. Together, these results imply a strong relationship between boredom proneness and cognitive and affective dysregulation, and show that individual levels of self-control can account for the lion’s share of variance in the relationships between boredom, cognition, and affect.

We recently proposed that the right hemisphere plays a crucial role in the processes underlying mental model building and updating. Here, we review the evidence we and others have garnered to support this novel account of right hemisphere function. We begin by presenting evidence from patient work that suggests a critical role for the right hemisphere in the ability to learn from the statistics in the environment (model building) and adapt to environmental change (model updating). We then provide a review of neuroimaging research that highlights a network of brain regions involved in mental model updating. Next, we outline specific roles for particular regions within the network such that the anterior insula is purported to maintain the current model of the environment, the medial prefrontal cortex determines when to explore new or alternative models, and the inferior parietal lobule represents salient and surprising information with respect to the current model. We conclude by proposing some future directions that address some of the outstanding questions in the field of mental model building and updating. (PsycINFO Database Record

Research has shown that damage to either the left or right hemisphere can lead to deficits in visuoconstructional skills including drawing and figure copying. Nevertheless, research would suggest that the nature of the deficits arising from left and right brain injury are distinct in nature if not severity, with the right hemisphere, and parietal cortex specifically, seen as critical for obtaining accurate spatial relations and the left hemisphere important for effective organisation (i.e., executive function). Much of this work on drawing and figure copying following brain damage has rested on qualitative assessments or crude marking scales with descriptive anchors for what constitutes good or poor performance. We employed quantitative analyses of drawings developed to assess accuracy in novice and expert artists. We analyzed drawings of a cube and a star in 50 patients (23, left brain damaged: LBD; 27 right brain damaged: RBD) who had suffered strokes. Our analysis was sensitive to the presence of neglect on the cube (i.e., missing left sided details) with voxel-wise lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) highlighting involvement of expected brain regions (superior temporal and supramarginal gyri). With left-sided omissions removed from analyses, we failed to find any difference between LBD and RBD patients. While the presence of left neglect appeared to exaggerate errors, this was only significant for errors of scale and proportion for the star drawing. VLSM of the distinct error domains demonstrated white matter involvement (and a minor contribution from the right insula) with respect to scale errors of the cube only. Finally, blinded judgements of hemisphere of lesion based on qualitative assessment of the drawings were no better than chance. These results suggest that figure copying is a complex task relying on large scale neural networks involving both hemispheres. Clearly, models of visuoconstructional capacity that emphasise right hemisphere dominance are not entirely accurate.

The classic definition of ‘pure’ optic ataxia suggests that these patients’ visuomotor impairments are independent of perceptual or attentional deficits. More recent work suggests that some patients with optic ataxia also have difficulty attending to targets in their ataxic field. Thus, an important question is whether these attentional deficits might be related to the well-known problems in visuomotor control evident in these patients. To investigate this question we had controls (N = 5) and CF, a patient with optic ataxia in his left visual field, perform tasks that required them to detect or reach towards targets presented in either central vision, or at different target eccentricities in the periphery. As expected, CF was less accurate than controls when reaching to targets in his ataxic (left) visual field, and was much slower than controls to detect the presence of targets in his ataxic field. The reaction times to lift the hand in the pointing and the detecting conditions were correlated in the ataxic field of patient CF, suggesting a common attentional deficit in both tasks. Importantly, although CF was slower to detect targets in the ataxic field, and less accurate to reach towards those same targets, the two deficits did not follow the same pattern. Specifically, only reaching errors in the ataxic field were strongly modulated by target eccentricity. These results suggest that dorsal posterior parietal lesions result in attention and visuomotor control problems in optic ataxia that arise from damage to independent mechanisms.

Several visuo-motor tasks can be used to demonstrate biases towards left hemispace in schizophrenic patients, suggesting a minor right hemineglect. Recent studies in neglect patients used a new number bisection task to highlight a lateralized defect in their visuo-spatial representation of numbers. To test a possible lateralized representational deficit in schizophrenia, we used the number bisection task in 11 schizophrenic patients compared to 11 healthy controls. Participants were required to orally indicate the central number of an interval orally presented. Whereas healthy subjects showed no significant bias, schizophrenic patients presented a significant leftward bias. Therefore, these results suggest an impairment in higher order representations of the number space in patients with schizophrenia, an impairment that is qualitatively similar to the deficit described in neglect patients.

Visual illusions have been shown to affect perceptual judgements more so than motor behaviour, which was interpreted as evidence for a functional division of labour within the visual system. The dominant perception-action theory argues that perception involves a holistic processing of visual objects or scenes, performed within the ventral, inferior temporal cortex. Conversely, visuomotor action involves the processing of the 3D relationship between the goal of the action and the body, performed predominantly within the dorsal, posterior parietal cortex. We explored the effect of well-known visual illusions (a size-contrast illusion and the induced Roelofs effect) in a patient (IG) suffering bilateral lesions of the dorsal visual stream. According to the perception-action theory, IG's perceptual judgements and control of actions should rely on the intact ventral stream and hence should both be sensitive to visual illusions. The finding that IG performed similarly to controls in three different illusory contexts argues against such expectations and shows, furthermore, that the dorsal stream does not control all aspects of visuomotor behaviour. Assuming that the patient's dorsal stream visuomotor system is fully lesioned, these results suggest that her visually guided action can be planned and executed independently of the dorsal pathways, possibly through the inferior parietal lobule.

We describe a set of Tufnel problems that arise when repeated use of a fixed-point scale precipitates failures to assess a full range of subjective experiences. As empirical evidence, participants in Study 1 periodically reported their depth of mind wandering on either 5- or 7-point Likert scales during a sustained attention task. The proportion of participants providing maximum scale ratings increased quickly over time-on-task and did so more quickly for the 5-point than for the 7-point group. Participants in Study 2 completed the same task using a 10-point scale before indicating whether and where they could have used a scale extended to "11" during the task. Slightly more than 20% of participants reported needing a scale extension. This Need for 11 was associated with differences in both reports of mind wandering depth and task performance. We conclude that Tufnel problems warrant methodological consideration and reflect interesting constraints on human judgment.

We investigated the relationship between self-regulation and two types of boredom proneness (perceived lack of internal stimulation, perceived lack of external stimulation) using a variety of measures of self-regulation. These included a general measure of self-control, measures of both regulatory focus (i.e., promotion or a sensitivity to gains/non-gains vs. prevention or a sensitivity to losses/non-losses) and regulatory mode (i.e., assessment or the tendency to compare means and goals vs. locomotion or the tendency to initiate and maintain commitment to action), and measures of cognitive flexibility (i.e., a perceived sense of control and the tendency to seek alternative solutions). Results identified a unique set of factors related to each boredom proneness component. Trait self-control and prevention focus were associated with lower boredom propensity due to a lack of external stimulation. Locomotion and the tendency to seek alternatives were associated with lower boredom propensity due to a lack of internal stimulation. These findings suggest that effective goal pursuit is associated with reduced likelihood of experiencing boredom.

Boredom is a common experience in healthy individuals and may be elevated in various neurological or psychiatric conditions. As yet, very little is known about the cognitive or neural bases of the subjective experience of boredom. We examined temporal perception and the temporal allocation of attention in healthy individuals reporting high- or low-levels of boredom. We found no difference in high- or low-boredom-prone individuals in the temporal allocation of attention, while individuals who experienced low-levels of boredom tended to underestimate time more so than high-boredom-prone individuals. Furthermore, high-boredom-prone individuals demonstrated higher error values when estimating time indicating that the subjective perception of the passage of time may be a critical component to the experience of boredom.

Processes of covert visual spatial attention have been closely linked to the programming of saccadic eye movements. In particular, it has been hypothesized that the reduction in saccadic latency that occurs in the gap paradigm is due to the prior disengagement of covert visual spatial attention. This explanation has received considerable criticism. No study as yet has attempted to demonstrate a facilitation of the disengagement of attention from a covertly attended object. If such facilitation were possible, it would support the hypothesis that the predisengagement of covert attention is necessary for the generation of express saccades. In two experiments using covert orienting of visual attention tasks (COVAT), with a high probability that targets would appear contralateral to the cued location, we attempted to facilitate the disengagement of covert attention by extinguishing peripheral cues prior to the appearance of targets. We hypothesized that the gap between cue offset and target onset would facilitate disengagement of attention from a covertly attended object. For both experiments, responses to targets appearing after a gap were slower than were responses in the no-gap condition. These results suggest that the prior offset of a covertly attended object does not facilitate the disengagement of attention.

The superior parietal cortex is critical for the control of visually guided actions. Research suggests that visual stimuli relevant to actions are preferentially processed when they are in peripersonal space. One recent study demonstrated that visually guided movements towards the body were more impaired in a patient with damage to superior parietal cortex. Whereas past studies have explored disordered movement in optic ataxic patients, there has been less exploration of space perception in terms of search capacity in this population. In addition, there is some debate concerning the relationship between deficits of visuomotor control and impaired attention/perception in optic ataxia. Given that the dorsal stream has been implicated in the spatial processing of stimuli in peripersonal space, and damage to this region is known to cause optic ataxia, we felt that further investigation was warranted. We examined tactile search behavior in the fronto-parallel and radial planes in a patient with right superior parietal damage and optic ataxia. We used a pegboard with removable cylindrical pegs that allowed for the reorganization of targets between trials. To better characterize three-dimensional search behavior, we included both horizontal and vertical search conditions. Results showed that the patient spent more time searching, was more accurate and revisited more targets in right versus left space. Interestingly, the patient spent the majority of her time specifically searching the lower right quadrant of the stimulus array. Further analysis revealed lower target detection rates along the outer borders of the pegboard on all sides. The search pattern observed here is unusual considering that all targets were within arm's reach. The present experiment demonstrates that damage to superior parietal cortex impairs tactile search and biases exploration towards lower right peripersonal space.

Blindsight refers to residual visual abilities of patients with primary visual cortex lesions. Most of this research uses single case studies, most famously patient GY. We examined a patient (DC) after surgical resection of V1 who demonstrated robust but reversed blind field target localisation, mislocalising midline blind field targets to the periphery and vice versa. This pattern was reliable across multiple sessions and was not because of extraocular light scatter. We then used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine neural responses to blind field motion stimuli with no evidence of motion-selective activation in DC's extrastriate cortex in the damaged hemisphere, in stark contrast to GY who showed robust bilateral activation in response to blind field stimuli. This suggests that DC's blind field performance may not represent true blindsight. Follow-up testing with the target--background contrast reversed (i.e., black targets/white background), eliminated DC's reversed localisation, strongly suggesting that she was employing an unusual decision criterion based on intraocular light scatter. DC's failure to demonstrate true blindsight may be related to the age at which she acquired her lesion--much later in life than GY.

Many studies have demonstrated that prism adaptation can reduce several symptoms of visual neglect: a disorder in which patients fail to respond to information in contralesional space. The dominant framework to explain these effects proposes that prisms influence higher order visuospatial processes by acting on brain circuits that control spatial attention and perception. However, studies that have directly examined the influence of prisms on perceptual biases inherent to neglect have revealed very few beneficial effects. We propose an alternative explanation whereby many of the beneficial effects of prisms arise via the influence of adaptation on circuits in the dorsal visual stream controlling attention and visuomotor behaviors. We further argue that prisms have little influence on the pervasive perceptual biases that characterize neglect.

Right parietal lesions often lead to neglect, in which patients fail to attend to leftward stimuli. Recent models of neglect suggest that, in addition to attentional impairments, patients demonstrate impairments of spatial remapping and/or spatial working memory (SWM). Although spatial remapping could be considered a kind of spatial memory process itself (i.e., updating remembered locations based on anticipated saccade outcomes), the two processes operate on very different time scales (milliseconds versus seconds). In the present study, we examined the influence of saccadic and covert spatial remapping on SWM in healthy individuals. An initial control condition in which subjects had to respond to a probe stimulus (i.e., is the probe in the location previously occupied by the target?) following a 1500ms delay was contrasted with conditions in which the fixation point moved (left, right, up, or down) at the onset of the delay. In a second version of the task, participants made covert shifts of attention at delay onset requiring covert spatial, rather than saccadic, remapping. In both tasks SWM performance was best when no remapping was required with the largest decrements in SWM being observed in the covert spatial remapping task. For both saccadic and covert spatial remapping, a consistent cost was observed for remapping the target array into right visual space. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric biases in attention and differences in performance for peripersonal versus extrapersonal space.

Previous studies have suggested a right hemineglect in schizophrenia, however few assessed possible visual-perceptual implication in this lateralized anomaly. A manual line bisection without (i.e., lines presented on their own) or with a local cueing paradigm (i.e., a number placed at one or both ends of the line) and the Motor-free Visual Perceptual Test-Vertical format (MVPT-V) were used to assess the visual-perceptual abilities of healthy controls, schizophrenia and depressed patients. Whereas healthy controls and depressed patients showed a non-significant leftward bias in manual line bisection, schizophrenia patients bisected significantly to the left of the true centre of the line. Interestingly, the pattern of performances in response to the local cueing paradigm was similar in depressed and schizophrenia patients such that both groups demonstrated a significant change in their bisection performance only in response to a cue placed at the right extremity of the line (control performance was modified by cues at either end of the line). Finally, in the MVPT-V, schizophrenia patients were impaired relative to the other two groups, especially in the spatial working memory and visual closure categories. These results suggest that: 1/a deficit towards the right hemifield, consistent with a mild form of right hemineglect, can be observed in schizophrenia; 2/lateralized anomalies could also be observed in depression using an appropriate tool such as manual line bisection; 3/performances in the MVPT-V suggested that a simple visual-perceptual deficit could not explain the lateralized anomaly observed in the manual line bisection, as it is the case in the hemineglect syndrome.

Unilateral neglect, a neurological disorder in which patients fail to detect or respond to contralesional stimuli, has long been considered a failure of attentional orienting mechanisms. This review provides a selective overview of the prominent biases in spatial orienting and exploratory motor behaviour observed in these patients before considering the impact of other factors on the presentation of the disorder and how those factors might inform current neurological models of neglect. In the latter part of the review, we intend to suggest that neglect is likely to be a combination of distinct but interacting impairments including biases in attentional orienting, exploratory motor behaviours and a deficit of spatial working memory. That is, we suggest that the cardinal symptom of neglect - a loss of awareness for contralesional stimuli and events - arises as a result of a combination of these impairments rather than being associated solely with the more dramatic and immediately evident biases in spatial attention.

Typically, spatial neglect after right-hemisphere brain damage is defined as a failure to orient towards or attend to stimuli located towards the contralesional, in this case the left, side of space. Here, we report that neglect patients have difficulty maintaining the spatial locations of vertically arranged stimuli on the right side of space. This indicates that neglect is associated with a severe deficit in the maintenance of spatial information even on the ipsilesional “good” side.

To date functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has not been extensively used in presurgical evaluation of patients with intractable epilepsy. Patient S.P. presented with left frontal originating seizures, secondary to a large porencephalic cyst that encompassed much of his occipital and temporal cortex and a substantial portion of ipsilateral parietal cortex. Nevertheless, S.P. did not demonstrate any gross impairments of praxis or speech. Scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) telemetry revealed reduced background activity in the left hemisphere, an absence of identifiable normal sleep states, and confirmed the left frontal origin of his seizures with a prolonged postictal state, suggesting that the remaining cortex in S.P.'s left hemisphere did not function normally despite his apparently normal appearance. Dichotic listening results also suggested that S.P. had an atypical language representation suggestive of either bilateral or right hemisphere speech representation. Surgical intervention to remove the remaining left hemisphere cortex was a serious consideration for treatment of S.P.'s seizures. We used fMRI to evaluate whether or not the remaining cortex in S.P.'s left hemisphere supported any cognitive or motor functions. Even though the volume of cerebral cortex was severely reduced and displaced in the left hemisphere, fMRI revealed significant activation in this remaining tissue in response to motor, somatosensory, and word generation tasks. In other words, we were able to demonstrate using fMRI that the remaining tissue in S.P.'s left hemisphere continued to support some motor and cognitive functions. The possible implications of these findings in terms of functional reorganisation are discussed briefly.

We tested two patients with posterior cerebral lesions on two pointing tasks. In the first task, the patients pointed to targets presented on a touch screen monitor and pointing accuracy was recorded. One patient (JR) demonstrated good localisation of targets presented to her blind field while the other patient (YP) did not. Movement kinematics were measured in the second task to compare the kinematics of movements made to sighted field targets with those made to blind field targets. For this version of the task both patients demonstrated above chance localisation of blind field targets although the slope of the relationship between the end of pointing movements and the target locations was significantly steeper for JR than for YP. Furthermore, JR showed a kinematic profile for movements made to blind field targets that mirrored the profile of kinematics to sighted field targets. That is, both peak velocity and time to peak velocity increased with increasing target eccentricity for movements made to blind and sighted field targets alike. Although patient YP now showed more reliable spatial localisation on this pointing task when compared with the touch screen task, his kinematics for movements made to targets in his blind field were quite different from those made to targets in his sighted field. Based on the patients’ CT scans, we suggest that the superior performance of patient JR is a consequence of greater sparing of her parietal cortex in the damaged hemisphere. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

On the covert orienting of visual attention task (COVAT), responses to targets appearing at the location indicated by a non-predictive spatial cue are faster than responses to targets appearing at uncued locations when stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) is less than approximately 200 ms. For longer SOAs, this pattern reverses and RTs to targets appearing at uncued locations become faster than RTs to targets appearing at the cued location. This facilitation followed by inhibition has been termed the biphasic effect of non-predictive peripheral spatial cues. Currently, there is debate about whether these two processes are independent. This issue was addressed in a series of experiments where the temporal overlap between the peripheral cue and target was manipulated at both short and long SOAs. Results showed that facilitation was present only when the SOA was short and there was temporal overlap between cue and target. Conversely, inhibition occurred only when the SOA was long and there was no temporal overlap between cue and target. The biphasic effect, with an early facilitation followed by a later inhibition, occurred only when the cue duration was fixed such that there was temporal overlap between the cue and target at short but not long SOAs. In a final experiment, the duration of targets the temporal overlap between cue and target and the SOA were manipulated factorially. The results showed that facilitation occurred only when the SOA was short, there was temporal overlap between cue and target and the target remained visible until the subject responded. These results suggest that the facilitation and inhibition found on COVATs which use non-informative peripheral cues are independent processes and their presence and magnitude is related to the temporal properties of cues and targets.

Corrigendum to “Do visual illusions probe the visual brain? Illusions in action without a dorsal visual stream” [Neuropsychologia 45 (2007) 1849–1858] Yann Coello a,∗, James Danckert b, Annabelle Blangero c, Yves Rossetti c,d a Unit de Recherche sur l’Evolution des Comportements et l’Apprentissage, UPRES EA 1059 and UMR-CNRS 8163 STL, Universite Charles de Gaulle, Lille, BP 60149, F.59653 Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France b Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada c INSERM UMR-S 534, Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale, Universite Claude Bernard, Lyon, Bron, France d Mouvement et Handicap, Institut Federatif des Neurosciences de Lyon, Hospices Civils de Lyon, France

In patients with schizophrenia, abnormal performance on the antisaccade task suggests that for overt attentional shifts, there is difficulty with the endogenous control of exogenous orienting when endogenous and exogenous modes have opposite goals. We examined whether patients with schizophrenia also have difficulty with the endogenous control of exogenous orienting for covert shifts of attention. Fifteen medicated patients with chronic schizophrenia and 15 matched controls performed two versions of the covert orienting of attention task (COVAT). On one COVAT, targets appeared at the cued location (TAC) on all trials. On the second COVAT, targets appeared at the contralateral location to the cue (TCC) on all trials. Reaction time (RT) for TAC and TCC trials was equal in the control group. However, for the schizophrenia group, RT for TCC trials was significantly slower than RT for TAC trials. This indicates that patients with schizophrenia were unable to inhibit the orienting of attention to peripheral cues even when they knew that targets would never appear at the same location as the cue. These results suggest that patients with chronic schizophrenia have difficulty utilizing endogenous strategies to inhibit exogenous covert attentional shifts.