Temporary remission of representational hemineglect through vestibular stimulation

This study was aimed at finding whether vestibular stimulation could reduce neglect of representational space, in the same way it reduces other manifestations of the neglect syndrome. Representational neglect was shown in 8 patients asked to evoke mentally the map of France and to name as many towns as possible successively on each side of a vertical axis splitting the map in two equivalent halves. Performances appeared much poorer on the left than on the right side. Immediately after a cold left ear irrigation, the left side scores improved in all patients, although the right scores remained unchanged. The results are discussed within the framework of the representational theory of neglect. It is proposed that mental representation of space would result from dynamic and distributed neural mechanisms.