IMPAIRED VISUAL-SEARCH IN PATIENTS WITH UNILATERAL NEGLECT - AN OCULOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

The attentional deficit underlying hemispatial neglect was examined th rough a detailed analysis of the eye movement performance of a group o f neglect patients. Relative to normal subjects and to patients with h emianopia without neglect, patients with left neglect make fewer fixat ions and have shorter inspection time on the contralesional left side. They also start their search to the right of the midline and make sig nificantly more fixations and longer fixations on the ipsilesional rig ht side. A positive linear relationship between horizontal location an d frequency of fixations was noted for the neglect group as a whole, a s well as for most of the individual patients. These findings strongly endorse the view that the attentional deficit in neglect follows a le ft-right gradient. The peak of the maximum fixations, however, is not on the extreme right, as might be predicted by a strict gradient accou nt, and is more consistent with recent views that the midsagittal plan e of the viewer is redirected rightwards. These findings provide a det ailed analysis of the eye movement patterns in neglect patients and de monstrate the robustness of oculographic analysis for examining their altered spatial representation. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.