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Visual, proprioceptive and tactile performance in left neglect patients
Sylvie Chokron1, Pascale Colliot, Paolo Bartolomeo
1Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale, CNRS, UMR 5105, 38000 Grenoble, France. chokron@ext.jussieu.fr
Neuropsychologia
|September 5, 2002
Summary
Right-brain damaged patients with spatial neglect do not show a shift in their egocentric reference frame. Visual neglect, not tactile, correlated with spatial neglect severity, challenging existing theories.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Clinical Neurology
Background:
- Unilateral spatial neglect often results from right-hemisphere damage.
- A leading hypothesis suggests an ipsilesional shift in the egocentric reference frame (ER) causes neglect.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test if an ipsilateral ER shift underlies supramodal spatial bias in neglect.
- To investigate visual and tactile spatial processing in neglect patients.
Main Methods:
- A within-subject design was used with 12 neglect patients and 12 controls.
- Tasks included blindfolded proprioceptive pointing, visual bisection, and tactile bisection.
Main Results:
- No systematic ipsilesional ER deviation was found in neglect patients.
- Patients showed a rightward bias in visual bisection but normal tactile bisection.
- Visual bisection performance correlated with neglect severity; no cross-modal correlations were observed.
Conclusions:
- The findings do not support the ER shift hypothesis for neglect.
- Results suggest distinct mechanisms for visual and tactile spatial processing in neglect.
- Attentional mechanisms may play a more significant role in visual neglect.