Motivation and attention following hemispheric stroke

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Rehabilitation Medicine

Background:

• Spatial neglect (SN) is a common attention disorder, often resulting from right hemisphere stroke.
• It significantly hinders rehabilitation outcomes and lacks universally effective treatments.
• A potential therapeutic avenue involves the interaction between motivation and attention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review how motivation modulates attention in healthy individuals and neurological disease.
• To discuss the contribution of motivational impairments to neglect.
• To present experimental work on reward's interaction with attentional biases in SN.

Main Methods:

• Adapted the classic Landmark task to investigate reward effects in SN.
• Examined how centrally located, reward-associated stimuli impact attentional bias.
• Analyzed the influence of anticipated monetary reward on neglect.

Main Results:

• Centrally located stimuli associated with reward improved spatial neglect.
• Reward-associated stimuli reduced the rightward attentional bias characteristic of SN.
• Positive motivation appears to influence attentional bias through general mechanisms like alerting and engagement.

Conclusions:

• Motivational stimulation, particularly reward, shows promise for improving attention in SN.
• Reward may modulate attentional bias via alerting and task engagement rather than direct salience enhancement.
• Motivation could be integrated into practical rehabilitation strategies for spatial neglect.