The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	The attenation system of the human brain: clinical approach
Language	J
AuthorList	Kyoko Suzuki
Affiliation	Department of Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 35 (2), 70-76, 2019
Received
Accepted
Abstract	The primary goal of selective attention is to focus processing resources on behaviorally relevant objects in our environment. Functions of the attention system change as our environment and our inner state change from time to time. The disturbances in attention after brain damage cause various symptoms such as psychomotor slowing, delirium, unilateral spatial neglect and visual inattention (dorsal simultanagnosia). We investigated patients with visual inattention and found that the context, the properties of the target and task requirement, dramatically altered the extent of their visual attention. One of the patients could visually perceive relatively large areas when she or the target object was moving compared to those in the static condition. Another patient was able to detect intervening lines among textures or simple geometric figures but not to detect lines among Japanese characters which seem to be more meaningful and familiar for him. The other patient could recognize and point to the overlapped area of two circles. But once he started coloring the overlapped area, he could not recognize the extent of the area and colored much larger areas than expected. These findings indicated the dynamic changes in visual attention. It is important to understand the features of the attention system, which affect most of cognitive functions.
Keywords	alerting, orienting, visual attention, simultanagnosia, unilateral neglect