Object-centered neglect in patients with unilateral neglect: effects of left-right coordinates of objects

Abstract When patients with right-sided hemispheric lesions neglect information on the left side, with respect to what set of spatial coordinates is left defined? Two potential reference frames were examined in this study, one where left and right are defined with respect to the midline of the viewer and/or environment (viewer/env-centered) and the other where left and right are defined with respect to the midline of the object (object-centered). By rotating the stimulus 90° clockwise or counterclockwise, and instructing patients with neglect to report the colors appearing around the border of a stimulus, an independent measure was obtained for the number of colors reported from the left and right of the viewer/env- and from the object-based reference frame. Whereas significant object-centered neglect was observed only for upper case asymmetrical letters but not for symmetrical letters nor for drawings of familiar animals or objects, significant viewer/env-based neglect was observed with all the stimulus types. We present an account of the coexistence of neglect in more than one frame of reference and the presence of object-centered neglect under a restricted set of conditions.