Impact of post-stroke unilateral spatial neglect on goal-directed arm movements: systematic literature review

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN), a highly prevalent post-stroke impairment, refers to one's inability to orient or respond to stimuli located in the contralesional visual hemispace. Unilateral spatial neglect has been shown to strongly affect motor performance in functional activities, including non-affected upper extremity (UE) movements. To date, our understanding of the effects of USN on goal-directed UE movements is limited and comparing performance of individuals post-stroke with and without USN is required.

To determine, in individuals with stroke, how does the presence of USN, in comparison to the absence of USN, impacts different types of goal-directed movements of the non-affected UE.

The present review approach consisted of a comprehensive literature search, an assessment of the quality of the selected studies and qualitative data analysis.

A total of 20 studies of moderate to high quality were selected. The USN-specific impairments were found in tasks that required a perceptual, memory-guided or delayed actions, and fewer impairments were found in tasks that required an immediate action to a predefined target.

The results indicate that USN contributes to deficits observed in action execution with the non-effected UE that requires greater perceptual demands.