Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”

Recent research has led to the hypothesis that events which unfold in time might be spatially represented in a left-to-right fashion, resembling writing direction. Here we studied fourteen right-hemisphere damaged patients, with or without neglect, a disorder of spatial awareness affecting contrales...

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Main Authors: Mario Bonato, Arnaud Saj, Patrik Vuilleumier
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2016-01-01
Series:Neural Plasticity
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/2716036
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author Mario Bonato
Arnaud Saj
Patrik Vuilleumier
author_facet Mario Bonato
Arnaud Saj
Patrik Vuilleumier
author_sort Mario Bonato
collection DOAJ
description Recent research has led to the hypothesis that events which unfold in time might be spatially represented in a left-to-right fashion, resembling writing direction. Here we studied fourteen right-hemisphere damaged patients, with or without neglect, a disorder of spatial awareness affecting contralesional (here left) space processing and representation. We reasoned that if the processing of time-ordered events is spatial in nature, it should be impaired in the presence of neglect and spared in its absence. Patients categorized events of a story as occurring before or after a central event, which acted as a temporal reference. An asymmetric distance effect emerged in neglect patients, with slower responses to events that took place before the temporal reference. The event occurring immediately before the reference elicited particularly slow responses, closely mirroring the pattern found in neglect patients performing numerical comparison tasks. Moreover, the first item elicited significantly slower responses than the last one, suggesting a preference for a left-to-right scanning/representation of events in time. Patients without neglect showed a regular and symmetric distance effect. These findings further suggest that the representation of events order is spatial in nature and provide compelling evidence that ordinality is similarly represented within temporal and numerical domains.
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spelling doaj-art-24dcc1fd247b41bb87877e94d7d2d7422025-02-03T01:07:53ZengWileyNeural Plasticity2090-59041687-54432016-01-01201610.1155/2016/27160362716036Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”Mario Bonato0Arnaud Saj1Patrik Vuilleumier2Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, BelgiumDepartment of Clinical Neurosciences, Neuropsychological Unit, University Hospital of Geneva, 1205 Geneva, SwitzerlandDepartment of Neurosciences, Laboratory of Neurology and Imaging Cognition, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, SwitzerlandRecent research has led to the hypothesis that events which unfold in time might be spatially represented in a left-to-right fashion, resembling writing direction. Here we studied fourteen right-hemisphere damaged patients, with or without neglect, a disorder of spatial awareness affecting contralesional (here left) space processing and representation. We reasoned that if the processing of time-ordered events is spatial in nature, it should be impaired in the presence of neglect and spared in its absence. Patients categorized events of a story as occurring before or after a central event, which acted as a temporal reference. An asymmetric distance effect emerged in neglect patients, with slower responses to events that took place before the temporal reference. The event occurring immediately before the reference elicited particularly slow responses, closely mirroring the pattern found in neglect patients performing numerical comparison tasks. Moreover, the first item elicited significantly slower responses than the last one, suggesting a preference for a left-to-right scanning/representation of events in time. Patients without neglect showed a regular and symmetric distance effect. These findings further suggest that the representation of events order is spatial in nature and provide compelling evidence that ordinality is similarly represented within temporal and numerical domains.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/2716036
spellingShingle Mario Bonato
Arnaud Saj
Patrik Vuilleumier
Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”
Neural Plasticity
title Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”
title_full Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”
title_fullStr Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”
title_full_unstemmed Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”
title_short Hemispatial Neglect Shows That “Before” Is “Left”
title_sort hemispatial neglect shows that before is left
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/2716036
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