UNILATERAL NEGLECT

[F. Frank LeFever]

Another particularly cruel (and stupid) joke from kkollins who
apparently knows nothing at all about unilateral neglect but doesn't
hesitate to reply on the basis of his own private fantasies.

n.b.: I have presented some of my own research on unilateral neglect at
meetings of the American Academy of Neurology (Boston,April 1991),
International Neuropsychological Society & Australian Society for Study
of Brain Impairment (Broadbeach, Australia, July 1991), and two more
meetings of INS (San Diego, 1992; Durham, England, July 1992).

(1) Unilateral neglect has nothing to do with "sensory deprivation"
studies (such as were fashionable 40 years ago); it is a neurological
condition, usually arising from stroke, particularly right hemisphere
stroke, and especially right parietal cortex (sometimes from frontal or
subcortical sites, relatively rarely from left-hemisphere sites).

(2) Unilateral neglect is not a sensory "deprivation" or "loss", but
may better be described as "unilateral inattention".  It may affect
more than one perceptual domain (e.g. visual, auditory, somatosensory)
but visual effects are most often studied.  It must be distinguished
from hemispatial SENSORY loss such as a visual "field cut" or
hemianopsia.

(2) Italian researchers demonstrated 2-3 decades ago that unilateral
neglect can be shown in visual memory, for example ignoring buildings
on the left when patients imagined a scene in their home towns; when
asked to imagine facing the opposite direction the previously neglected
buildings were "seen" and described, whereas the previously "seen"
buildings (now being on the left in this view) were ignored...

Lorenzo: what exactly would you like to say or ask about neglect?

F. Frank LeFever, Ph.D.
New York Neuropsychology Group



In <36708334.CE871307 at pop3.concentric.net> kkollins at pop3.concentric.net
writes: 
>
>It's a a particularly-Cruel form of sensory-deprivation. (see my
earlier
>post of this evening). Cheers, Lorenzo, ken collins
>
>Lorenzo pia wrote:
>> 
>> Would you like to speak with me about unilateral Neglect?
>> 
>> --
>> Lorenzo Pia
>> E-mail    lorpia at tin.it
>> Web page  http://space.tin.it/io/lorepia
>>           http://members.wbs.net/homepages/l/o/l/lollo4.html