What the eyes perceive, the brain ignores: a case of pure unilateral representational neglect

Bisiach and Luzzatti (1978) provided evidence that unilateral spatial neglect is not only a disorder of visual perception, but also can affect mental representations such that patients fail to report the left side of scenes or objects in mental imagery. However in case reports of representational neglect generally it is accompanied by perceptual neglect. We report a rare occurrence of a patient (NL) who presents a persistent unilateral neglect which appears to be limited to visual imagery. The deficit appeared in tasks which require the formation and manipulation of new visuo-spatial representations as well as those which require access to information about familiar scenes. The patient, who had a lesion in the right parietal lobe, showed no evidence of perceptual or personal neglect, although there was some evidence of visual extinction. We argue that the concept of visuo-spatial working memory can provide a framework within which to interpret aspects of the representational form of neglect, whether or not it is accompanied by perceptual neglect.