Abstract
Visuomotor prismatic training has been demonstrated to be among the most effective rehabilitative techniques of spatial neglect, a neurological syndrome manifested by a number of right brain-damaged patients characterized by unawareness of the egocentric left half of the world. In the present study, we demonstrate that a novel oculomotor prismatic training procedure only consisting in a sequence of gaze shifts to visual targets, can reduce spatial neglect symptoms. Following oculomotor prismatic training, patients show a significant decrease in neglect severity in straight ahead and paper and pencil tasks. We propose that during oculomotor prismatic training, the inconsistency between the prisms-biased visual/oculomotor input and the unbiased head-on-trunk proprioceptive information relative to the straight-ahead position determines the observed aftereffects and the amelioration of spatial neglect symptoms.
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Acknowledgements
Authors are grateful to Spatial Motor and Bodily Awareness (SaMBA) Group and especially to Francesca Garbarini, Lorenzo Pia, and Raffaella Ricci for their valuable comments about the present research. IR, at the time of the experiments, was founded by a research grant by the University of Turin, Italy and, with Marco Neppi Modona, by a grant of the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR), PRIN 2010ENPRYE_003.
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Ronga, I., Franza, M., Sarasso, P. et al. Oculomotor prismatic training is effective in ameliorating spatial neglect: a pilot study. Exp Brain Res 235, 1771–1780 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4923-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4923-6