A large review of 51 studies looked at how people with Parkinson's disease manage visuospatial attention compared to healthy individuals. The study focused on patients who were cognitively unimpaired and right-handed. These types of attention tasks involve focusing on specific areas, switching focus, and reacting to new information in the environment.
The findings show that people with Parkinson's often struggle with sustained, selective, and divided attention. They also showed impairments in exogenous orienting, which is the ability to shift attention toward an external stimulus. However, the study found that alerting, endogenous orienting, and reorienting remained preserved in these patients.
Some results regarding spatial bias were small and depended on the specific context. These findings suggest that certain networks in the brain may be affected by the condition. Because the evidence on spatial bias is limited by a small number of studies, these results are primarily used to help doctors understand how the condition affects the brain and to help plan better rehabilitation strategies.
