Abstract
Unilateral brain damage may lead to (usually left) hemineglect (De Renzi, 1982; Heilman, Bowers, & Watson, 1984; Heilman & Valenstein, 1979; Mesulam, 1981, 1983). In severe cases it is as if the left half of the patient’s world has ceased to exist, with failure to report, respond to, or orient towards stimuli on the side contralateral to the lesion, in the absence of primary sensory or motor defects. The patient may shave, groom or dress only the right side, leave food untouched on the left side of the plate, read only words, letters or sentences written on the right side of a page, leave an unusually wide margin on the left, copy only the right side of a drawing, and bisect a visually presented horizontal line to the right of the true midpoint, especially if the whole line lies to the left of the midline (Heilman & Valenstein, 1979). There may even be neglect of the left side of a scene that is currently being imagined (Bisiach & Luzzatti, 1978), such that the patient’s inability to recall objects depends upon his or her imaginary standpoint. Thus the affected “space” with respect to the actual observer (patient) can be delineated, i.e., extrapersonal space, or with respect to the vantage point of an imagined observer during topographical recall, or with respect to a particular component of a larger object (Halsband, Gruhn, & Ettlinger, 1985). Indeed sometimes the left side of all objects in view may be neglected, and on other occasions all objects falling in the left half of the field may be ignored, indicating the importance of attentional mechanisms in this syndrome.
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Bradshaw, J.L., Pierson-Savage, J.M., Nettleton, N.C. (1988). Hemispace Asymmetries. In: Whitaker, H.A. (eds) Contemporary Reviews in Neuropsychology. Springer Series in Neuropsychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3780-8_1
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