Evidence from a line bisection task for visuospatial neglect in Left Hemiparkinson's disease

The perception of extrapersonal space in Parkinson's disease was examined with two line bisection tasks. One was a conventional pencil and paper test, the line bisection section of the Behavioural Inattention Test. In the other, the stimuli were displayed on a large (2×2.4 m) screen and varied...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) 2001-09, Vol.41 (20), p.2677-2686
Main Authors: Lee, A.C, Harris, J.P, Atkinson, E.A, Fowler, M.S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Aged
Analysis of Variance
Biological and medical sciences
Bisection
Case-Control Studies
Female
Hemiparkinsonism
Humans
Male
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Neglect
Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology
Parkinson Disease - complications
Parkinson Disease - pathology
Parkinson's disease
Perceptual Disorders - etiology
Psychological Tests
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Space Perception - physiology
Visuospatial tasks
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Summary:The perception of extrapersonal space in Parkinson's disease was examined with two line bisection tasks. One was a conventional pencil and paper test, the line bisection section of the Behavioural Inattention Test. In the other, the stimuli were displayed on a large (2×2.4 m) screen and varied in length (48–480 mm) and also in location on the screen (left, centre and right). They were presented at two viewing distances (0.6 and 1.5 m). Subjects remotely adjusted the position of a cursor until it appeared to bisect the stimulus line, using two push-buttons, one in each hand. The PD participants ( n=18) had a marked asymmetry of motor symptoms. They were divided into two groups, those with predominantly left-sided motor symptoms (LPD, n=9), and those with predominantly right-sided motor symptoms (RPD, n=9). The control group ( n=9) were all right-handed. No significant differences between the groups were found on the BIT bisection task. In contrast, when the stimuli were presented on the screen, LPD subjects showed a significant rightward bias in their settings of the cursor, particularly for lines on the left and centre of the screen, which was greater, the longer the stimulus line. The RPD group bisected lines slightly to the left, in common with the control group (pseudo-neglect). In a second experiment, Parkinsonian subjects repeated this task, but with the buttons reversed between the hands, so that the cursor was moved to the left by the right hand, and vice versa, but the pattern of results was the same as in the first experiment. The data suggest a small but reliable neglect in left hemiparkinson's disease, which is contralateral to the non-dominant (and probably worse affected) hemisphere. The dissociation between the response and the bisection error suggests a visuospatial impairment in LPD.
ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
DOI:10.1016/S0042-6989(01)00129-8