A 65-year-old woman had a right-hemispheric ischemic stroke in the territory of the middle cerebral artery (Figure 1). After short-term treatment, the patient was transferred to the neurorehabilitation clinic. Neurological examination results showed left-sided hemiparesis with dysarthria and left-sided visual hemineglect but no visual field defects. The patient had always been an avid crossword puzzle solver, and she resumed this hobby during her first neurorehabilitation days. An example page of her crossword puzzle book is depicted in Figure 2A. The first immediately observable phenomenon was a typical performance pattern for severe visual hemineglect: the entire left side of the page, as well as a small portion of the paracentral right side, were left completely unsolved. However, a closer inspection revealed a second novel and puzzling phenomenon: in the right, paracentral page portion, the patient solved only vertical words, whereas in a more peripheral, right page portion, she solved both vertical and horizontal words. This was also evident by analyzing performance according to the 39 crossword columns (Figure 2A). The first word, a vertical one, was solved at column 22. In columns 22 to 29, exclusively vertical words were solved (in dark shading in Figure 2A). Only at column 30, the patient started solving horizontal words (in light shading in Figure 2A). Interestingly, in the right paracentral page portion, the patient did not solve horizontal words even when their starting cell coincided with the one of an already solved vertical word, suggesting a high selectivity of the vertical dimension in this page portion. Indeed, the analysis of the horizontal and vertical items of the crossword puzzle with the same starting cell (Figure 2B), revealed a median (interquartile range) starting position of 27.5 (4) for vertical words and 36 (10) for horizontal words.

一名65岁的女性在大脑中动脉的区域发生了右半球缺血性卒中（图1）。短期治疗后，患者被转到神经康复诊所。神经系统检查结果显示左侧偏瘫伴有构音障碍和左侧视觉偏斜，但无视野缺损。病人一直是一个狂热的填字游戏，她在第一个神经康复日就恢复了这种爱好。她的填字游戏的示例页面如图2A所示。第一个立即可观察到的现象是严重的视觉偏斜的典型表现模式：页面的整个左侧以及中心旁右侧的一小部分都完全无法解决。然而，仔细检查发现了第二种新颖而令人费解的现象：在右中上页面部分，患者仅解决了垂直单词，而在更外围的右页面部分中，她同时解决了垂直和水平单词。通过根据39个填字游戏列分析性能，这也很明显（图2A）。在第22列中解决了第一个单词，即垂直单词。在第22至29列中，仅对了垂直单词进行了解析（图2A中的黑色阴影）。仅在第30列，患者才开始求解水平单词（图2A中的阴影）。有趣的是，在右中旁页面部分中，即使患者的起始单元格与已解决的垂直单词之一重合，患者也无法分辨水平单词，这表明该页面部分的垂直尺寸具有很高的选择性。