How do the parietal lobes direct covert attention?

Overview

In cases of unilateral parietal damage patients have trouble with stimuli in the visual hemifield on the side opposite the lesion (contralesional). This deficit is clear when they are first cued to attend to a location on the side of the lesion (ipsilesional) and then given a target on the opposite side of fixation. Our first experiments indicated that these patients do worse when cued to a location in either field and then given a target in the contralesional as compared to the ipsilesional direction. The results of this experiment can be accounted for by a representational or a directional view. A second experiment seeks to discriminate between the two. The results tend to favor the directional view.