Spatial Dimensions of Automatic and Voluntary Orienting Components of Attention

Hemispatial neglect (neglect for the sake of brevity) occurs when patients do not report, respond or orient to stimuli presented contralaterally to the lesioned hemisphere, provided the deficit cannot be attributed to sensory or motor impairments (see, e.g. papers in Jeannerod, 1987). Because neglect is almost always observed after right parietal lesions (Vallar & Perani, 1987), in which follows I will consider only neglect for the left side of space.