title: Personal neglect-a disorder of body representation?
abstract: The cognitive mechanisms underlying personal neglect are not well known. One theory postulates that personal neglect is due to a disorder of contralesional body representation. In the present study, we have investigated whether personal neglect is best explained by impairments in the representation of the contralesional side of the body, in particular, or a dysfunction of the mental representation of the contralesional space in general. For this, 22 patients with right hemisphere cerebral lesions (7 with personal neglect, 15 without personal neglect) and 13 healthy controls have been studied using two experimental tasks measuring representation of the body and extrapersonal space. In the tasks, photographs of left and right hands as well as left and right rear-view mirrors presented from the front and the back had to be judged as left or right. Our results show that patients with personal neglect made more errors when asked to judge stimuli of left hands and left rear-view mirrors than either patients without personal neglect or healthy controls. Furthermore, regression analyses indicated that errors in interpreting left hands were the best predictor of personal neglect, while other variables such as extrapersonal neglect, somatosensory or motor impairments, or deficits in left extrapersonal space representation had no predictive value of personal neglect. These findings suggest that deficient body representation is the major mechanism underlying personal neglect.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Baas
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuropsychology, Centre for Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tuebingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Bianca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: de Haan
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland; Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tanja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Grässli
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuropsychology, Centre for Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tuebingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans-Otto
authors.initials: HO
authors.lastname: Karnath
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland; Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mueri
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Walter J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Perrig
authors.affiliation: Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wurtz
authors.affiliation: Division of Cognitive and Restorative Neurology, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland. Electronic address: klemens.gutbrod@insel.ch.
authors.forename: Klemens
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gutbrod
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000473:pathology; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006225:Hand / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000150:complications* / Q000473:pathology; D010550:Personal Space; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric