Effects general attention deficits on unilateral spatial neglect : Is verbalization effective in behavioral control?

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Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is the failure of brain damaged patients to attend to and explore stimuli presented in the space contralateral to their lesion. Left USN followed by the right hemisphere stroke is frequently observed among stroke patients. Persisting USN disturbs the daily activities of patients, and moreover, it often reduces effectiveness of motor rehabilitation. There have been many attempts to improve USN, but most of them show only temporal effects, probably because USN is not a unitary deficit. USN is predominantly explained in terms of disorder of spatial attention, but it may also be affected by non-spatial problems, such as general attention deficits. If general attention training can modulate neglect performance, it may provide another approach for neglect rehabilitation. Results of previous studies suggest that language plays an important role to control neglect performance.This research aimed to study whether or not neglect patients could control their neglect behavior by virtue of language function. Several tasks were developed for this purpose, all of which consisted of two conditions. One was a baseline condition which allowed neglect patients to perform the task according to their own strategy, and the other was an experimental condition which required them to perform it through verbalization. Significant improvement of performance in the experimental condition was regarded as effects of verbalization through which patients could control their neglect performance.The results clearly showed that neglect patients could improve their spatial problem through non-spatial strategies, and shed light on neglect rehabilitation. Papers regarding the results were partly read or published in several academic meetings and journals. The whole picture of the research is now prepared for submission.