Can mirrors alleviate visual hemineglect?

Following right hemisphere stroke, many patients display an indifference to objects and events in the left side of the world ('neglect'), Here, we des cribe a new technique that might help accelerate recovery from neglect. The patient sits at a table and a mirror is propped vertically on the patient' s right side in the parasagittal plane, so that when the patient rotates hi s head rightward and looks into the mirror, he sees the neglected side of t he world reflected in the mirror. Our question was: since the sensory infor mation was now coming from the non-neglected left side, would this somehow make him overcome the neglect? In pilot experiments, two types of responses were seen: (a) In one subset of patients the presence of the mirror seemed to enhance the patients' awareness of the neglected field, so that they re ached correctly for an object that was shown in the neglected field. Will r epeated practice with this task accelerate recovery from neglect? (b) The s econd group of patients kept reaching into the mirror to grasp the reflecti on or kept groping behind the mirror ('mirror agnosia'). If the mirror was placed in the coronal position and the object placed behind their head, the n some of these patients (from group B) reached correctly for the object. Q uite apart from its obvious theoretical implications, we believe this techn ique might provide a new approach for the treatment of visual hemineglect.