Is neglect (only) lateral? A quadrant analysis of line cancellation.

We report an investigation of unilateral visual neglect in 23 patients with right cerebro-vascular accident (CVA) and 3 with left CVA. On a modified version of Albert's test of line cancellation the patients show the typical errors of omission in the hemispace contralateral to the lesion. In addition, however, there is a significant effect of stimulus position in the vertical dimension; the patients made most errors in the lower quadrant of the array, contralateral to the site of lesion. We emphasize the importance of studying the distribution of attention along all spatial dimensions in the hemispatial neglect syndromes.