Fig. 6.

Example of “natural” paradoxical facilitation (Vuilleumier et al., 1996). After a first stroke (lesion 1) the patient suffered from a left visuospatial neglect and hemianopia which disappeared after a second stroke that affected the frontal eye fields (lesion 2). The second stroke had a paradoxical facilitatory effect on visuospatial attention, while the patient newly developed aphasic symptoms. While the first lesions shifted and increased processing power availability towards the left hemisphere (over-excitability) hereby increasing attention towards the right visual hemifield, the second lesion re-shifted and therefore normalized attention allocation while losing overall processing power.