Visual, proprioceptive and tactile performance in left neglect patients

Patients with unilateral spatial neglect due to right-hemisphere lesions typically fail to attend to and explore left-sided stimulus objects. It has been postulated that in right-brain damaged (RBD) patients an ipsilesional displacement of the egocentric frame of reference (ER), whether visual or tactile, may be responsible for a contralesional supramodal spatial bias causing their left neglect behavior. However, this hypothesis had been proposed without testing, in the same patients, the position of the ER or their performance in the visual and tactile modalities. Thus, the aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that an ipsilateral shift of the ER is responsible for a supramodal spatial bias in neglect. For this purpose, a within-subject design is required. Consequently, 12 left neglect patients and 12 control subjects were asked to perform a proprioceptive straight-ahead pointing task while blindfolded, as well as visual and tactile bisection tasks. In the left neglect patients, we found:no systematic deviation of the ER on the ipsilesional right side;a significant rightward bias in visual bisection, and normal performance in tactile bisection;no correlation among the three tasks;that only visual bisection correlated with the severity of neglect. These results are discussed with regard to the egocentric and attentional hypothesis of neglect.