From a sample of 90 stroke cases showing visual inattention following right hemisphere brain damage, 17 cases were identified who showed more inattention on the right than the left side on some tests. Eight of these subjects had CT scan-confirmed unilateral right hemisphere damage and one of these eight had MRI scan-confirmed unilateral right brain damage. A number of hypotheses are examined to explain this "paradoxical" right inattention. The most parsimonious proposes that right inattention is produced by an interaction of a compensatory left sided scanning strategy in association with a non-lateralised attentional loss.