Dysfunction of visual spatial attention in occipital stroke patients with hemianopia during the acute phase / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the visual spatial attention of occipital stroke patients with hemianopia during the acute phase.Methods Eight occipital stroke patients with homonymous hemianopia of left side in the acute stage and 10 age-matched healthy controls were recruited to examine the capability of visual spatial attention.The cue-target paradigms were applied in this behavioral research.Results In the repeated measures analysis of variance,the difference of group and cue range had distinct main effect in reaction time and accuracy rate,while the difference of target location only had main effect in reaction time.Compared with the control group,the patients exhibited longer reaction time ((1 628.26 ± 183.97) ms vs (839.79±61.29) ms,F(1,16) =163.706,P＜0.05) and lower accuracy rate (73.40％ ±3.12％ vs 92.99％ ±0.76％,F(1,16) =371.850,P ＜ 0.05).The patients displayed lower accuracy rate under large cue than small cue (71.38％ ±3.35％ vs 75.42％ ±4.23％,F(1,7) =6.706,P ＜0.05),while that of healthy controls did not vary under different cue range(93.01％ ± 0.50％ vs 92.96％ ± 1.42％,F(1,9) =0.010,P ＞ 0.05).The patients showed longer reaction time in blind-side target than healthy-side target ((1 664.17±196.57) msvs (1 594.35±174.45) ms,F(1,7) =14.157,P＜0.05),while that of control group in two target location had no statistically significant difference ((839.67 ± 60.41) ms vs (839.91 ±73.54) ms,F(1,9) =0.000,P ＞0.05).Furthermore,the mean reaction time of stroke patients had a negative correlation with the binocular vision field index (r =-0.824,P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The extent of vision field loss in occipital stroke patients with hemianopia can reflect impairment of visual spatial attention during the acute phase.The rehabilitation training should emphasize promoting recovery of visual spatial attention in the blind side under large cue.