Mahayana, Indra T.; Tcheang, Lili; Chen, Chiao-Yun; Juan, Chi-Hung and Muggleton, Neil G.. 2014. The Precuneus and Visuospatial Attention in Near and far Space: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study. Brain Stimulation, 17(5), pp. 673-679. ISSN 1935-861X [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Background

There is a large body of evidence for the involvement of the parietal cortex in orientation and navigation in space. This has been supplemented by investigation of the contribution of a number of subregions using transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Objective

The role of the precuneus area, located in the medial plane of posterior parietal cortex (PPC), in visuospatial functions is not well understood. We investigated the contribution of this area using the landmark task.
Methods

Participants were asked to make forced-choice judgments of which side of prebisected line was longer for near and far viewing conditions (70 and 180 cm, respectively). Online 10 Hz, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was delivered for 500 ms over the right precuneus, rPPC and vertex (control), in separate blocks of trials. The rPPC stimulation was used as a positive control, having previously resulted in “neglect like” spatial bias effects in a number of studies.
Results

A no-TMS condition showed a leftward spatial bias (pseudoneglect) for near space judgments but not for far space and was used as the baseline. Precuneus stimulation resulted in rightward spatial bias from the midpoint in near space similar to the rPPC neglect-like effect. No significant effects were seen with vertex stimulation.
Conclusion

This study shows that precuneus, like other parietal areas, is involved in visuospatial functions. Further work is required to clarify how the contribution of this area differs from other parietal regions.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2014.06.012
Additional Information:	This work was supported by the National Science Council Taiwan (Grant numbers: 100-2410-H-008-074-MY3, 102-2410-H-008-021-MY3, 101-2628-H-008-001-MY4 and 102-2420-H-008-001-MY3).
Keywords:	Visuospatial attention; Parietal cortex; Precuneus; Neglect-like effect; TMS; Landmark task.
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event September 2014 Published
Item ID:	10760
Date Deposited:	15 Oct 2014 09:20
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2014 14:39
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10760

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