PARADOXICAL NEGLECT - SPATIAL REPRESENTATIONS, HEMISPHERE-SPECIFIC ACTIVATION, AND SPATIAL CUEING

Several recent studies have reported neglect of both the left and righ t sides of space (''dual neglect''), depending upon particular circums tances, within single patients. A further case, EL, who sustained a un ilateral lesion of the left parietal lobe, is reported here. EL shows left neglect in reading and object naming tasks, and right neglect in cancellation, drawing, oral spelling, and copying tasks. In addition, the side neglected can be altered by cueing EL to start copying on the right rather than the left, and by parsing visual displays so that th ey contain single or multiple objects. EL neglected the left side of s ingle object representations and the right side of representations in which stimuli were coded as separate perceptual objects. We discuss re lations between representations of space within and between perceptual objects, the effects of attentional cueing on these spatial represent ations, and their relation to activation within each cerebral hemisphe re.