Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Qualitative analysis of unilateral spatial neglect in relation to laterality of cerebral lesions
  1. G. Gainotti,
  2. P. Messerli,
  3. R. Tissot
  1. Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases of the University of Perugia, Italy
  2. The Neuropsychological Unit of the Clinic of Neurology, University of Geneva, Switzerland

    Abstract

    Two unselected groups of patients, affected by a mono-hemispheric cerebral lesion, were studied in two seperate services by means of various tasks of copying drawings, in order to check the hypothesis of a qualitative difference between unilateral spatial neglect (USN) of right and left brain-damaged patients. In both experimental groups drawing asymmetries were found to be of slight importance among the left hemispheric patients, consisting chiefly in a tendency to omit some figures lying on the right half of the models, and to be definitely more severe in the right braindamaged patients, where the main pattern of USN seemed to be the tendency to leave unfinished the left half of the drawings. A second aim of the study was to describe some less frequent features of USN, sometimes found in patients who were recovering from a severe damage of the minor hemisphere. These patterns of USN seemed to suggest that the core of unilateral spatial neglect consists in a peculiar disorganization of the type of synthesis of the sensory data which seems characteristic of the minor hemisphere.

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.