Affiliations: Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva,
Israel | University of Wales, Bangor, UK
Note: [] Corresponding author: Shai Danziger, Ben Gurion University of
the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel, P.O. Box 653. Tel.: +972 8 6477901; Fax: +972 8
6477697; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The effects of damage to the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus in
humans on reflexive orienting and selective attention were investigated. In a
spatial orienting task three patients with unilateral pulvinar damage
determined the location of a visual target that followed a cue that was not
informative as to the targets location. Contralesional targets were responded
to more slowly than ipsilesional targets. Also, at long cue target intervals
patients responses to contralesional targets that appeared at previously cued
locations were slower than to non-cued locations indicating that pulvinar
damage does not affect inhibition of return. In the selective attention task
two of the patients identified a target that appeared at one level of a
global-local hierarchical stimulus while ignoring a distractor present at the
other level. The distractor indicated either the same response as the target or
a different response. Response times to targets in both visual fields were
similar as were interference effects from the ignored distractors. These data
indicate that engaging attention contralesionally is not impaired in
discrimination tasks and that filtering of irrelevant information was not
impaired contralesionally.
