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Hemispatial neglect: its effects on visual perception and visually guided grasping.
J J Marotta1, T J McKeeff, M Behrmann
1Department of Psychology, Centre for Vision Research, York University, Behavioural Sciences Building, 4700 Keele Street, Ont., M3J-1P3, Toronto, Canada. jonathan_marotta@sympatico.ca
Neuropsychologia
|May 20, 2003
Summary
Hemispatial neglect, a brain disorder, impairs shape perception and object grasping. Patients struggle to analyze object contours, affecting both visual perception and motor control.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neurology
Background:
- Hemispatial neglect is a neurological disorder affecting awareness of contralateral space.
- It can impact perception and visually guided movements, with task-dependent severity.
- Some studies show perception deficits without affecting visuomotor control for the same stimuli.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how hemispatial neglect affects the perception and grasping of irregularly shaped objects.
- To determine if deficits in perceptual analysis correlate with visuomotor control impairments.
Main Methods:
- Patients with hemispatial neglect and control subjects performed perceptual discrimination tasks with irregularly shaped objects.
- A grasping task assessed the precision and location of object grasps.
Main Results:
- Neglect patients showed difficulty discriminating object shapes based on contour.
- In grasping tasks, neglect patients exhibited increased grasp variance and a bias towards the right side of objects.
- These findings suggest a link between perceptual and visuomotor deficits.
Conclusions:
- Hemispatial neglect impairs the ability to form structural representations of objects.
- This deficit affects both visual perception and the control of visually guided movements.
- The findings highlight the interconnectedness of perception and action in neglect.