Efficacy of a reaction training on various attentional and cognitive functions in stroke patients

Abstract

The efficacy of a computer-assisted reaction training on various attentional and cognitive functions was studied in stroke patients with lateralised cortical lesions. Patients were tested three times with a comprehensive test battery comprising several attention tests, as well as more general cognitive tasks, with the aim of separating training effects from spontaneous recovery and trivial practice effects. An additional follow-up assessment—carried out 6 weeks after the end of training—was employed to examine the stability of training effects. At baseline the right-hemisphere-damaged patients showed more pronounced impairments of sustained attention and vigilance, whereas the left-brain-damaged patients performed worse in choice reaction tasks, making more false-positive responses. Both groups showed significant training effects for a number of attention functions, but not for vigilance, and there was no generalisation of the training effects to more general cognitive functions. Overall, the training effects were less pronounced for the right-brain-damaged group.