Unilateral body neglect: schemas versus images?

Abstract

Unilateral spatial neglect has been extensively described for visual and representational manifestations but tactile and motor manifestations as well as body neglect point to bodily manifestations of this neurological condition. This chapter reviews the perceptual, motoric and high-level representational symptoms manifested in neglect patients and attempt to classify them according to the body image/schema framework. One puzzling aspect of the wide spectrum of body neglect symptoms is that physiological bottom-up maneuvers, such as prism adaptation, which act at the level of body schema, do also efficiently improve body image manifestations of neglect. This relationship allows us to elaborate on the dialectical relationships between body image and body schema. Thus, understanding body neglect in terms of diagnosis, evaluation, physiopathology and therapeutics through the dynamical interactions between body schema and body neglect, provide perspectives to manage other lateralized body troubles, neglect-like manifestations of bodily attention or distorted representations.