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A lateralized brain network for visuospatial attention

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An Erratum to this article was published on 23 November 2011

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Abstract

Right hemisphere dominance for visuospatial attention is characteristic of most humans, but its anatomical basis remains unknown. We report the first evidence in humans for a larger parieto-frontal network in the right than left hemisphere, and a significant correlation between the degree of anatomical lateralization and asymmetry of performance on visuospatial tasks. Our results suggest that hemispheric specialization is associated with an unbalanced speed of visuospatial processing.

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Figure 1: The three branches of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF I, II and III).
Figure 2: Correlations between anatomical and behavioral lateralizations.

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Change history

  • 13 October 2011

    In the version of this article initially published, the institute identifier was omitted from the INSERM affiliation of author Michel Thiebaut de Schotten. The correct affiliation should read Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) S 975. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members of the Natbrainlab, D.H. ffytche, P. Bartolomeo and F. Doricchi for discussion. This work was supported by the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships for Career Development (FP7), the Bettencourt–Schueller Foundation, the Guy's and St Thomas Charity, the Wellcome Trust, the UK National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at the South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation Trust and Institute of Psychiatry, King's College and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche of France (project CAFORPFC, no. ANR-09-RPDOC-004-01 and project HM-TC, no. ANR-09-EMER-006).

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Author notes

  1. Michel Thiebaut de Schotten and Flavio Dell'Acqua: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences, Natbrainlab, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK

    Michel Thiebaut de Schotten, Flavio Dell'Acqua, Stephanie J Forkel, Declan G M Murphy & Marco Catani

  2. INSERM–Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) S 975 Groupe Hospitalier (GH) Pitié–Salpêtrière, Paris, France

    Michel Thiebaut de Schotten

  3. Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK

    Michel Thiebaut de Schotten, Flavio Dell'Acqua, Andrew Simmons & Marco Catani

  4. National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health, London, UK

    Flavio Dell'Acqua & Andrew Simmons

  5. Medical Research Council Centre for Neurodegeneration Research, King's College London, London, UK

    Andrew Simmons

  6. Department of Neurosurgery, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Francesco Vergani

Authors
  1. Michel Thiebaut de Schotten
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  2. Flavio Dell'Acqua
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  3. Stephanie J Forkel
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  4. Andrew Simmons
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  5. Francesco Vergani
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  6. Declan G M Murphy
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  7. Marco Catani
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Contributions

M.T.d.S. conceived and coordinated the study, reviewed and collected neuropsychological data, performed the tractography dissections, helped with the post-mortem dissections and wrote the manuscript. F.D. developed the spherical deconvolution algorithm, collected and preprocessed the neuroimaging data before the dissections and helped drafting the manuscript. S.J.F. helped collecting neuropsychological data and drafting the manuscript. A.S. and D.G.M.M. provided funding for the neuroimaging data and helped to draft the manuscript. F.V. helped drafting the manuscript and performed the post-mortem dissections. M.C. helped to conceive and coordinate the study. M.C. also wrote the manuscript and performed the post-mortem dissections.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michel Thiebaut de Schotten.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1–8, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Results and Supplementary Note (PDF 3625 kb)

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de Schotten, M., Dell'Acqua, F., Forkel, S. et al. A lateralized brain network for visuospatial attention. Nat Neurosci 14, 1245–1246 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2905

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