Perception of horizontal distances in patients with spatial neglect

Two different models have argued that neglect of contralateral stimuli following brain damage might be associated with either a compressed or an anisometric neural representation of space along the earth-horizontal axis. We tested these models by determining neglect patients' perception of spatial distances in the horizontal plane. We found no evidence for any compression or expansion or for anisometry along the earth-horizontal axis. The findings argue against a distortion of subjective space along the horizontal axis in patients with neglect, which could account for their failure to orient towards and to explore the contralesional parts of space.