Hasegawa Chihiro, Hirono Nobutsugu, Yamadori Atsushi
Department of Psychology, Kobe Gakuin University, Ikawadani-cho, Nishi-ku, Kobe, Japan.
Neurocase. 2011 Dec;17(6):518-26. doi: 10.1080/13554794.2010.547506. Epub 2011 Jun 27.
We report results of our investigation of the case of a 34-year-old woman (YJ) who showed persistent left unilateral spatial neglect (USN) in daily living, frequently hitting obstacles or bumping into the wall, although her visuospatial ability was mostly preserved in paper and pencil neuropsychological tests. In order to clarify this apparent discrepancy, her eye fixation pattern was monitored in testing situations and in natural daily activities using an eye camera. The results showed that when taking the standard tests YJ tended to shift her fixation point to the left edge of the testing frame to overcome over-searching tendency to the right as left hemianopics without left USN would do. However in natural situations, this compensatory leftward fixation was not found. This may be due to the lack of adequate frames of reference in the natural environment. Our findings suggest limitation of laboratory neuropsychologicial testing to fully appreciate the scope of a patient's disability in natural settings.
我们报告了对一名34岁女性（YJ）病例的调查结果。该女性在日常生活中表现出持续的左侧单侧空间忽视（USN），经常撞到障碍物或撞到墙上，尽管她的视觉空间能力在纸笔神经心理学测试中大多得以保留。为了澄清这一明显的差异，我们使用眼动仪在测试情境和自然日常活动中监测了她的眼动注视模式。结果显示，在进行标准测试时，YJ倾向于将注视点转移到测试框架的左边缘，以克服像没有左侧USN的左侧偏盲患者那样过度向右搜索的倾向。然而，在自然情境中，未发现这种向左的代偿性注视。这可能是由于自然环境中缺乏足够的参照框架。我们的研究结果表明，实验室神经心理学测试存在局限性，无法充分了解患者在自然环境中的残疾程度。
