Increased attentional demands impair contralesional space awareness following stroke

▶ Contralesional loss of awareness following stroke is highly variable. ▶ Severe contralesional unawareness under dual-task conditions emerged for a group of right brain damaged patients apparently unimpaired at paper and pencil tests. ▶ A striking contralesional bias emerged in a left brain damaged patient also. ▶ The degree of impairment for contralesional space awareness depends on the quantity of attentional resources available for task performance. ▶ Apparently spared contralesional awareness may simply reflect the availability of resources that are just sufficient to perform a single-task.