Spatial attention is guided by the perceived salience and relevance of objects in the environment, a process considered to depend on a broad parieto-frontal cortical network. Signals arising from the limbic and nigrostriatal pathways conveying affective and motivational cues are also known to modulate visual selection, but the nature of this contribution and its relation to spatial attention remain unclear. We investigated the role of reward information in 15 patients with left hemispatial neglect and 15 control subjects playing multiple rounds of a virtual foraging game. Participants’ exploration tracked dynamically adjusted underlying reward distributions, largely unbeknownst to them. Both control and neglect participants showed typical exploration/exploitation balance, dependent on abundance or scarcity of rewards. De-reinforcing previously favored, mostly right, regions of space attenuated left space under-exploration in patients. Multiple regression analysis indicates that such reward-based training may benefit mostly patients early after lesion onset, with mild neglect and small lesions sparing subcortical regions. Our findings support the view that spatial exploration recruits heavily right hemispheric visuospatial attentional mechanisms as well as reward signals processed by basal ganglia and prefrontal cortical circuits, which serve to learn about the motivational relevance of environmental stimuli and help prioritize attention and motor response selection.

空间注意力由环境中物体的显着性和相关性来指导，该过程被认为取决于广泛的顶额额叶皮层网络。边缘和黑质纹状体传递情感和动机线索的信号也可以调节视觉选择，但是这种作用的性质及其与空间注意力的关系仍然不清楚。我们调查了奖励信息在15名左半身偏瘫患者和15名对照受试者进行多轮虚拟觅食游戏的过程中的作用。参与者的探索跟踪了动态调整的基本奖励分配，这在很大程度上是他们所不知道的。对照者和疏忽者都表现出典型的探索/开发平衡，这取决于奖励的丰度或稀缺性。取消加固患者以前偏爱的空间（主要是右侧区域）会减弱左侧空间的不足。多元回归分析表明，这种基于奖励的培训可能会在病变发作后早期使大多数患者受益，轻度的忽视和较小的病变会保留皮质下区域。我们的发现支持以下观点：空间探索会募集大量右半球视觉空间注意力机制以及基底神经节和前额叶皮层回路处理的奖励信号，从而有助于了解环境刺激的动机相关性，并有助于优先考虑注意力和运动反应选择。多元回归分析表明，这种基于奖励的培训可能会在病变发作后早期使大多数患者受益，轻度的忽视和较小的病变会保留皮质下区域。我们的发现支持以下观点：空间探索会募集大量右半球视觉空间注意力机制以及基底神经节和前额叶皮层回路处理的奖励信号，从而有助于了解环境刺激的动机相关性，并有助于优先考虑注意力和运动反应选择。多元回归分析表明，这种基于奖励的培训可能会在病变发作后早期使大多数患者受益，轻度的忽视和较小的病变会保留皮质下区域。我们的发现支持以下观点：空间探索会募集大量右半球视觉空间注意力机制以及基底神经节和前额叶皮层回路处理的奖励信号，从而有助于了解环境刺激的动机相关性，并有助于优先考虑注意力和运动反应选择。