Studies in the Neuropsychology of Attention Impairment: Human Symptoms and Animal Models

This chapter begins with an effort to understand altered attentiveness seen in patients with petit mal epilepsy at the time of their characteristic seizure discharge. To buttress the point about significant reduction of visual sensory input during spike-wave seizures. Most recently the people have recorded from single neurons in rostral brainstem during task performance in intact animals using Evarts' chronic single unit recording technique. The majority of the type 1 responses appeared to be associated with the flux of sensorimotor activity involved in the execution of the go response. The presence of anticipatory unit activity in the reticular system has been reported previously by Sparks and Travis in the monkey and by Olds, Mink, and Best in the rat. The role of the mesencephalon in the pathophysiology of petit mal epilepsy has obviously still to be established; however, these data on cellular inhabitants of this region of the brain appear to add to the reasonableness of the inference of involvement. .