Working memory (WM) is known to be impaired in patients with stroke experiencing unilateral spatial neglect (USN). Here, we examined in a systematic manner three WM components: memory of object identity, memory of object location, and binding between object identity and location. Moreover, we used two different retention intervals to isolate maintenance from other mnemonic and perceptual processes. Fourteen USN first-event stroke patients with right-hemisphere damage were tested in two different WM experiments using long and short retention intervals and an analog response scale. Patients exhibited more identification errors for items displayed on the contralesional side. Localization errors were also more prominent in the contralesional side, especially after a long retention interval. These localization errors were often a result of swap errors, that is, erroneous localizations of correctly identified contralesional objects in correctly memorized locations of ipsilesional objects. We conclude that a key WM deficit in USN is a lateralized impairment in binding between the identity of an object and its spatial tag.

已知在经历单侧空间忽视 (USN) 的中风患者中工作记忆 (WM) 受损。在这里，我们以系统的方式检查了三个 WM 组件：对象身份记忆、对象位置记忆以及对象身份和位置之间的绑定。此外，我们使用了两种不同的保留间隔来将维护与其他助记和感知过程隔离开来。在两个不同的 WM 实验中，使用长短保留间隔和模拟反应量表对 14 名 USN 右半球损伤的首次事件中风患者进行了测试。患者对显示在对侧的项目表现出更多的识别错误。定位错误在对侧也更为突出，尤其是在较长的保留间隔之后。这些定位错误通常是交换错误的结果，也就是说，正确识别的对侧对象在同侧对象的正确记忆位置中的错误定位。我们得出结论，USN 中的关键 WM 缺陷是对象身份与其空间标签之间绑定的侧化障碍。