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| Daniele Nico |
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Dip. di Psicologia, Via dei marsi 78 - 00185 Roma
e-mail: daniele.nico@uniroma1.it |
Poster Presentation: |
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| Navigation in patients with parietal lobe lesions. |
| D. Nico1*, L. Piccardi1, G. Iaria1, C. Guariglia 1,2 and L. Pizzamiglio1,2 | |
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1Dipartimento di Psicologia Universitŕ \"La Sapienza\", Roma
2IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Roma, Italy
*daniele.nico@uniroma1.it |
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| The ability to navigate seems to be damaged in neglect patients given their inability to turn towards left, to perceive left-sided landmarks and their inability to represent the left side of mental images of familiar places and pathways. In a series of previous studies we analysed different aspects of navigation in neglect patients, whose performances were defective in tasks requiring a reorientation by using geometric information or integrating them with landmarks. Nevertheless, neglect does not affect the ability to actively replicate passive linear translations by using vestibular and somatosensory information. In the present study, the ability of neglect patients to represent an unfamiliar environment by integrating visual information relative to environmental euclidean proprieties with vestibular and somatosensory information relative to subject movements in the environment has been studied. Right brain damaged patients, with and without neglect, and controls were required to navigate in a rectangular environment by operating a mobile robot until a sound was heard. The point in which the acoustic signal was perceived was to be memorized. The task was to reach the same point in 5 successive immediate recall trials and in a delayed recall. Compared to controls and to patients without neglect, neglect patients with imagery deficits showed a selective impairment in utilising euclidean and geometric information. The present results indicate the existence of a specific cognitive process, which required an environmental representation used for navigation. This process may be selectively damaged in patients with imagery neglect and spared in patients affected by other forms of unilateral neglect. |
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