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You never know where you are going until you know where you have been: Disorganized search after stroke
Author(s) -
Ten Brink Antonia F.,
Van der Stigchel Stefan,
VisserMeily Johanna M. A.,
Nijboer Tanja C. W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of neuropsychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.85
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1748-6653
pISSN - 1748-6645
DOI - 10.1111/jnp.12068
Subject(s) - perseveration , stroke (engine) , neglect , psychology , brain damage , physical medicine and rehabilitation , consistency (knowledge bases) , audiology , medicine , neuroscience , psychiatry , computer science , cognition , mechanical engineering , artificial intelligence , engineering
Disorders in spatial exploration can be expressed in a disorganized fashion of target cancellation. There is debate regarding whether disorganized search is related to stroke in general, to right brain damage or to unilateral spatial neglect ( USN ) in particular. In this study, 280 stroke patients and 37 healthy control subjects performed a computerized shape cancellation test. We investigated the number of perseverations and several outcome measures regarding disorganized search: Consistency of search direction (best r ), distance between consecutive cancelled targets and intersections with paths between previous cancelled targets. We compared performance between patients with left and right brain damage ( L , R ) and with and without USN ( USN +, USN −), resulting in four subgroups: LUSN −, RUSN −, LUSN +, and RUSN +. Higher numbers of intersections were found for the left brain‐ and right brain‐damaged patients with USN and for the right brain‐damaged patients without USN , compared to healthy control subjects. Furthermore, right brain‐damaged patients with USN showed a higher number of intersections compared to right brain‐damaged patients without USN and compared to left brain‐damaged patients with USN . To conclude, disorganized search was most strongly related to the neglect syndrome, and patients with more severe USN were even more impaired.