Deficits in visuospatial attentional cueing following mild traumatic brain injury

Visual attentional deficits are frequently reported in patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). In the present study, the ability to orient visual attention (i.e., the use of endogenous and exogenous visual cues) was investigated using a modified Posner visual search task, in which the participant was required to search for a target shape (radial frequency patterns) amongst distractor shapes. Participants were required to determine whether a target radial frequency pattern was present or absent from an array of distractors. Attention to the target location was cued using central or peripheral cueing procedures to investigate endogenous or exogenous attention allocation. Predictability was not manipulated between central and peripheral cues. Search difficulty was varied by systematically changing the radial frequency difference between target and distractors (and thereby shape difference), and cues could be valid or invalid in that they correctly or incorrectly indicated the position of the target shape. Both target discriminability (i.e., identifying the presence or absence of the target) and reaction times were measured. Thirteen patients with chronic mild TBI and 21 age-, sex-, and IQ -matched healthy controls participated in the study. For control participants, both discrimination accuracy and reaction times improved with visual search efficiency, and they were sensitive to the type of cue, with performance worst for cue invalid conditions than valid conditions. However, the results for TBI patients were strikingly different; we find that discrimination accuracy slightly improved with visual search difficulty (compared to controls), but not reaction times, and TBI patients were largely insensitive to the type of visual cue, and did not show a selective deficit for central or peripheral cues, suggesting an impairment in both endogenous and exogenous visual attention. In conclusion, patients with mild TBI exhibit a poor ability to orient visual attention.