Spatial attention biases after stroke: an analysis in 360 degrees

In a world where information is continuously bombarding our senses, spatial attention helps us to focus on what is important and not to get distracted. It allows us to build a 3D map of relevant stimuli in our environment, and thus to deal with the complex demands of everyday life. This ability can be disrupted by unilateral stroke and cause hemispatial neglect, a failure to orient attention to the contralesional side of space. Clinically, this condition is accompanied by an ipsilesional eye-in-head and head-on-trunk deviation. In this project, we aim to understand the mechanisms underlying these clinical symptoms, and their relationship with spatial attention biases. To this end, we will first investigate the effect of body position on overt and covert attention in healthy individuals. Tasks will be administered in immersive VR, allowing us to define space in 360 degrees independent of body position. Second, we will assess the relationship between spontaneous spatial attention biases, eye-in-head and head-on-trunk deviations in unilateral stroke patients and investigate whether manipulating body position can improve these biases. Finally, we aim to contrast the functional neuroanatomy of spatial attention biases, eye-in-head, and head-on-trunk deviation using converging evidence from lesion-symptom mapping in stroke patients and fMRI in healthy individuals. The project is expected to improve our understanding of post-stroke spatial cognition and its neural underpinnings.