title: How efficient is a simple copying task to diagnose spatial neglect in its chronic phase?
abstract: Twenty-five patients with spatial neglect were tested in the acute phase and about 1.3 years after a right-hemisphere stroke. Ten patients had developed chronic spatial neglect. We investigated how sensitive a simple copying task is in detecting spatial neglect in the chronic phase. When the stroke was acute, all 10 patients omitted a considerable number of contralesionally located items in the copying task. In the chronic phase, 60% of the chronic neglect patients still demonstrated noticeable neglect in the copying task. The data indicate that a simple task such as the copying of a multi-object scene is a helpful tool to detect residual symptoms of spatial neglect even more than 1 year after the stroke.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany. Leif.Johannsen@uni-tuebingen.de
authors.forename: Leif
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Johannsen
authors.forename: Hans-Otto
authors.initials: HO
authors.lastname: Karnath
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002561:Cerebrovascular Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013028:Space Perception; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013997:Time Factors