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

单侧空间忽视（USN）是脑损伤患者无法注意和探索病灶对侧空间的刺激。在脑卒中患者中，经常观察到左USN继发右半球卒中。持续的USN干扰了患者的日常活动，而且往往降低了运动康复的有效性。有许多尝试改善USN，但大多数只显示时间效应，可能是因为USN不是一个单一的赤字。USN主要用空间注意力障碍来解释，但它也可能受到非空间问题的影响，如一般注意力缺陷。如果一般注意训练可以调节忽视表现，它可能为忽视康复提供另一种途径。以往的研究结果表明，语言在控制忽视行为中起着重要作用。本研究旨在探讨忽视患者是否能通过语言功能控制其忽视行为。为此目的制定了几个任务，所有这些任务都包括两个条件。一个是基线条件，允许被忽视的病人根据自己的策略执行任务，另一个是实验条件，要求他们通过语言表达来执行任务。实验条件下表现的显著改善被认为是言语化的效果，患者可以通过言语化控制他们的忽视表现。研究结果表明，忽视患者可以通过非空间策略改善其空间问题，并为忽视康复提供启示。有关研究结果的论文部分被阅读或发表在几个学术会议和期刊上。研究的整体情况现在已准备好提交。

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.