abstract
- This study examined the hypothesis of greater functional asymmetry in the male compared with the female brain for contralesional spatial neglect. One hundred thirty-eight consecutive patients with computed tomography verified unilateral first strokes were examined within two months of onset. An aggregate measure of neglect was based on four clinical tasks: copying/drawing, line bisection, line cancellation, and figure cancellation. The incidence and severity of neglect were significantly greater after right-than left-hemisphere lesions and equal in men and women. Sex differences were not found between anterior and posterior groups after left- or right-hemisphere strokes. When neglect was based on different scores between ipsilateral versus contralesional response times on a Visual Search Task, the incidence was higher in females than males with right-hemisphere lesions.