Right hemispatial inattention and magical ideation

In visual and tactile bisection tasks, healthy subjects have been reported to place the subjective midline towards the left of the objective midline. This phenomenon, known as "pseudoneglect", has been interpreted as a right hemispatial inattention due to hypodopaminergic activity of the left hemisphere mesocortical dopamine system. In schizophrenic patients pseudoneglect was previously found to be correlated with severity of psychotic symptoms. We administered a tactile bisection task (rod centering) to 40 healthy students (20 women and 20 men). All participants also filled in the "Megical Ideation" scale which asks for hallucination-like experiences and delusion-like beliefs. There was no significant pseudoneglect for the group as a whole. However, Magical Ideation scores were significantly correlated to the size of relative right-sided inattention for the 20 men only. On the background of the findings in patients with schizophrenia we conclude that, at least in healthy men, susceptibility to schizophrenia-like experiences and thoughts is likewise accompanied by an attentional shift towards the left hemi-space.