Bilateral damage to the basal ganglia causes auto-activation deficit, a neuropsychological syndrome characterized by striking apathy, with a loss of self-driven behaviour that is partially reversible with external stimulation. Some patients with auto-activation deficit also experience a mental emptiness, which is defined as an absence of any self-reported thoughts. We asked whether this deficit...
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we asked participants to perform a visual target detection task with peripheral cues. In the first part of the experiment, cues were not predictive of the side of occurrence of the incoming target. In the second part of the experiment, unbeknownst to the participants, cues became 80% predictive, thus inducing an endogenous orienting of spatial...