Is there a distortion of body projection in extracorporeal space in neglect patients?

Neglect patients often present with a rightward shift of the direction stra ight-ahead of body midline. We investigated whether directions ahead of oth er body parts were similarly shifted or were differentially affected. Right brain-damaged patients, with and without neglect, and normal subjects had to indicate by manual pointings, the directions straight-ahead of the navel , the nose, the left and right shoulders. In neglect patients. constant err ors varied across directions with a decrease in magnitude from left to righ t, suggesting a compression of body projection in extracorporeal space. Mor eover. the projection of the left hemibody was smaller than the right in al l subjects, with and without neglect. This unexpected finding is discussed with regard to other spatial asymmetries observed in normal subjects. Neuro Report 11:3047-3051 (C) 2000 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.