Stroke patients who have difficulty paying attention to part of their visual field may perform better when offered a reward, a study by Imperial College London and Brunel University researchers has found. Between a third and half of stroke patients, suffer from spatial neglect - a disorder of visual attention that means they do not notice objects on one side of their field of view. The study found that patients with neglect did better in clinical tests when they were promised a financial reward. The findings published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, may lead to new behavioural therapies for stroke patients, and highlight a system in the brain that can be targeted by drugs. The research was funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Wellcome Trust, and the NIHR’s Imperial Biomedical Research Centre.