Somatosensory stimulation improves imagery disorders in neglect.
A group of 9 right brain damaged patients with unilateral neglect performed a set of tasks involving mental imagery with and without a transcutaneous electrical neural stimulation (TENS) to both sides of the neck. Results showed that TENS on the left side of the neck produced significant improvements of performances on the left side of mental representations of objects (drawing, shape comparison) as well as on left side of mental images of space (description of squares). The results suggest that the modification induced by TENS may affect the imagery systems involved in objects as well as in space representation.
Guariglia
C
C
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università La Sapienza, Roma, Italy. guariglia@uniroma1.it
Lippolis
G
G
Pizzamiglio
L
L
D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004561:Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation