Pizzamiglio L, Vallar G, Doricchi F
Department of Psychology, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy.
Neuroreport. 1995 Dec 29;7(1):370-1.
Spatial cognition requires the integration of visual inputs with proprioceptive and vestibular information about the position of the eye, the head and the body. All these sources are used by the brain to produce multiple higher-order (e.g. egocentric) representations of space, subserving accurate spatial behaviour. Such spatial representations are disrupted by unilateral cerebral damage producing neglect in the contralateral side of space. In eight brain-damaged patients with left unilateral neglect the manipulation of gravitational-otolithic information, obtained by placing patients in a supine position, produced a significant reduction of the rightward directional error in the line bisection task in all cases. This finding suggests that, in patients with neglect, gravitational information is processed in a non-symmetrical fashion, with a rightward bias towards the side of the lesion. This is the first study showing that manipulation of gravitational input affects neuropsychological disorders of visuo-spatial processing.
空间认知需要将视觉输入与有关眼睛、头部和身体位置的本体感觉和前庭信息整合起来。大脑利用所有这些信息源来生成多个高阶（例如以自我为中心的）空间表征，以支持准确的空间行为。这种空间表征会因单侧脑损伤而受到破坏，从而导致对空间对侧的忽视。在八名患有左侧单侧忽视的脑损伤患者中，通过让患者仰卧来获取重力耳石信息，结果在所有病例中，直线二等分任务中的向右方向误差均显著降低。这一发现表明，在患有忽视症的患者中，重力信息的处理方式是非对称的，对损伤侧存在向右的偏向。这是第一项表明操纵重力输入会影响视觉空间处理的神经心理障碍的研究。
