Affiliations: Service de Rééducation Neurologique, Hôpital
Henry Gabrielle, Hospices Civils de Lyon and Université Claude Bernard, Lyon,
France. | Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche
Médicale, Unité 534: Espace et Action, 16 avenue Lépine, Case 13, 69676
Bron, France.
Note: [] Corresponding author: Gilles Rode, Service de Rééducation
Neurologique, Hôpital Henry Gabrielle, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Route de
Vourles, BP 57, F-69565 Saint-Genis Laval, France. Tel.: +33 04 78 86 50 24;
Fax: +33 04 78 86 50 30; E-mail: gilles.rode@chu-lyon.fr.
Abstract: Previous work has shown that various symptoms of unilateral neglect,
including the pathological shift of the subjective midline to the right, may be
improved by a short adaptation period to a prismatic shift of the visual field
to the right. We report here the improvement of imagined neglect after prism
exposure in a patient with a left unilateral neglect. Despite a strong neglect
observed for mental images as well as for conventional tests, the mental
evocation of left-sided information from an internal image of the map of France
map was fully recovered following prism adaptation to the right. This
improvement could not be explained by the alteration of visuomotor responses
induced by the prism adaptation. Prism adaptation may therefore act not only on
sensory-motor levels but also on a higher cognitive level of mental space
representation and/or exploration.
