Auditory neglect: what and where in auditory space

Abstract

A sound that we hear in a natural setting allows us to identify the sound source and to localise it in space. Several lines of evidence indicate that the two aspects are processed in anatomically distinct cortical networks. Auditory areas that are part of the What or Where processing streams have been identified recently in man and in non-human primates. Comparison between anatomical and activation studies suggests that processing within either stream can be modulated by specific attentional factors. Attending to auditory events can be affected in neglect. Bisiach et al. (1984) described systematic directional errors to the ipsilesional space, which was considered a manifestation of hemispatial neglect and interpreted as a disruption of the neural network providing the internal representation of egocentric space. The other manifestation of auditory neglect is contralesional extinction in dichotic listening condition (Heilman and Valenstein, 1972). Recently two types of auditory neglect have been described, one corresponding to a primarily attentional deficit associated with basal ganglia lesions and the other to distortions of auditory space representations associated with parieto-prefrontal lesions (Bellmann et al., 2001). Based on studies of sound detection and sound recognition following hemispheric lesions we argue that the two types of neglect correspond to disturbed processing in either the What or the Where stream.