Features of Attention Distribution During Compression of the Temporal Brain

Abstract

Unlike the syndromes of focal brain damage, the phenomenology of other effects on the brain has not been sufficiently studied. Of particular interest is the mild compression of the brain by extracerebral benign meningiomas, not accompanied by visible damage to the brain substance. A homogeneous group of 28 patients with meningiomas adjacent to the temporal lobe in the hippocampus region was examined after a course of radiation therapy that stopped tumor growth. 16 patients were diagnosed with a left-sided and 12 with a right-sided tumor affecting the temporal lobe. The MRI data allowed us to conclude that the groups were comparable in terms of morphometric characteristics of the tumor and the degree of hemisphere compression. The control group consisted of 31 healthy subjects. All three groups were comparable in terms of education, age, and gender composition. The objective of the study was to study the features of the implementation of visual attention in these samples. When performing the BellsTest blank technique, where it was necessary to detect and delete images noisy by distractors as quickly as possible, patients with a left-sided tumor required generally more time than healthy subjects and patients with a right-sided tumor (p = .016). In addition, they showed a negative dependence of the number of errors on the task execution time r = -.87 (p < .001), whereas with right-hand compression, the test execution time and the number of errors remained independent variables. An involuntary spatial shift of the focus of attention to the side contralateral to the functionally more active hemisphere was recorded in the author's Asterisk technique in patients with a right-sided tumor location and was not observed in healthy right-handed subjects and patients with left-sided compression. All of these differences related specifically to strategies for distributing visual attention, but not to its overall effectiveness, which remained within the normative range. A comparison with literary sources allowed us to conclude that the characteristics specific to the work of this hemisphere were enhanced: successive with compression of the temporal sections of the left hemisphere and simultaneous with the right hemisphere. The study showed that compression of the neural network can be accompanied by an exaggerated course of its specific functioning.