Capturing peripersonal spatial neglect: An electronic method to quantify visuospatial processes

Abstract

Computerized as well as paper-and-pencil tasks are applied in mapping visuospatial neglect in experimental research and clinical practice. This article presents a new kind of computer-based assessment method, using an electronic pen display and user-friendly software. The approach is tailored to specific spatial processes and highlights the usefulness of a pen display in neglect patients. The advantages of the introduced method are illustrated by a recently designed battery of classic, as well as new, types of tests. The development of the appropriate stimuli and the assorted scoring systems is addressed, as well as the resulting types of task implementation and data generation. The diagnostic value of the different visuospatial neglect tests is demonstrated by comparative analyses between a neglect group and a control group. Among the benefits of the proposed assessment method are (1) the opportunity to perform standardized repeated measurements to quantify recovery, (2) online performance monitoring, (3) flexible employment, (4) the collection of exact data over a short period, and (5) the easy availability of more refined quantitative as well as interesting qualitative information, especially as compared to classic or paper-and-pencil tasks. To indicate that this method also lends itself well to measures for treatment procedures, an illustration is given with respect to specific measurements during prism adaptation. The tasks of the Visuospatial Neglect Test Battery and the prism adaptation measures are illustrated by a case study. The outlined applications are discussed with respect to experimental as well as clinical purposes.

Effectiveness of additional trunk exercises on gait performance: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

“…For this, the RevArte Visual Search Test (RVST) of Lafosse et al (2013) and the Visuospatial Neglect Test Battery (VNTB) of Vaes et al (2015) will be executed by the patients. A thorough description of these tests can be found in Lafosse et al (2013) and Vaes et al (2015) [34, 35]. The tests are run on the Metrisquare DiagnoseIS software platform and are presented on a Wacom pen display with a large active screen area of 47.70 × 26.82 cm (total screen size of 56.39 × 37.34 cm), connected to a PC.…”

Quantifying egocentric spatial neglect with cancellation tasks: A theoretical validation

“…We selected cancellation performance measures that are often used to summarize responses on cancellation tasks to diagnose spatial neglect (also listed in Table ): (1) the total number of omissions (O; Albert, ), (2) the number of contralesional omissions (Con O; Bailey, Riddoch, & Crome, ; Gauthier, Dehaut, & Joanette, ; Weintraub & Mesulam, ), (3) the number of contralesional cancellations divided by the total number of cancellations (Con H/H; Friedman, ), (4) the difference between left and right cancellations (L‐R; Demeyere, Riddoch, Slavkova, Bickerton, & Humphreys, ), (5) the difference between left and right cancellations divided by the total number of cancellations (L‐R/H; McIntosh, Brodie, Beschin, & Robertson, ), (6) the left cancellations divided by the right cancellations (L/R; Dalmaijer et al ., ) and (7) the centre of cancellation, which is the average horizontal coordinate of all cancelled targets minus the average horizontal coordinate of all targets (CoC; Rorden & Karnath, ; Vaes et al ., ). Some of these measures were linearly transformed to make the ranges of the different measures independent of the number of targets of the cancellation task: (1) the number of omissions were divided by the total number of targets and therefore values range from 0, which indicates no omissions, to 1, which indicates that all targets were omitted, (2) the number of contralateral omissions was divided by half of the total number of targets, which makes the values range from 0, indicating no contralateral omissions, to 1, indicating that all contralateral targets were omitted, (3) the left minus right difference was divided by half of the total number of targets, which makes the values range from −1, indicating that there were no hits on the left side and that all targets were cancelled on the right side, to 1, indicating that all targets were cancelled on the left side and that there were no hits on the right side.…”

“…Simple cancellation performance measures are, for instance, the number of (contralesional) omissions and the difference between cancellations in the left and the right visual field (see Table ). More complex cancellation performance measures have also been used, such as the centre of cancellation (CoC; Dalmaijer, der Stigchel, Nijboer, Cornelissen, & Husain, ; Mark & Monson, ; Rorden & Karnath, ; Vaes et al ., ) and estimating the extent to which performance depends on the target location using regression techniques (Chatterjee, Thompson, & Ricci, ). In addition to cancellation performance measures that aim to quantify the spatial bias, measures of search strategy have been devised, such as the starting point (Azouvi et al ., ) or more complex ones (for an in‐depth discussion, see Dalmaijer et al ., ).…”

Robot-assisted line bisection test in virtual reality

“…Recently, the field of cognitive neuroscience saw the development of more computerized and virtual reality tools to adapt classic paper-and-pencil evaluation tasks, including those assessing neglect consecutive to brain damage (Baheux, Yoshizawa, Seki, & Handa, 2006;Fordell, Bodin, Bucht, & Malm, 2011;Tsirlin, Dupierrix, Chokron, Coquillart, & Ohlmann, 2009;Vaes et al, 2014) or for experimental use with healthy participants (Gamberini, Seraglia, & Priftis, 2008;Heber, Siebertz, Wolter, Kuhlen, & Fimm, 2010).…”