Phenomena of Sensory Suppression

RECENTLY Bender and Furlow1reviewed the literature and described their case of an interesting sequel to cerebral injury similar to a syndrome first noted during World War 1. Briefly, this syndrome consists in the extinction, suppression or obscuration of the perception of an object in an "affected" field of vision when an object is presented simultaneously on the other, or "normal," side of the central point of fixation. In persons with this disturbance, who have suffered injuries primarily of the parieto-occipital cortex, an object is visible in the "affected" field provided there is no strong stimulation in the unaffected field. This phenomenon had previously been attributed by various authors to a defect in the patient's attentiveness. Bender and Furlow, however, pointed out in their report that the factor of attention provides only a partial explanation of what occurs in the syndrome. They elucidated the matter further by using Goldstein's