Unilateral neglect restricted to visual imagery

Abstract

Disorders in perceiving and exploring the visual space contralateral to a brain lesion have been frequently described. Many patients with hemi-neglect for extrapersonal space also show neglect in a representational domain when the task requires imagining a well-known piazza from a given vantage point or comparing two visual images. Cognitive and psychophysiological studies show a functional parallelism between the perceptual and imaginative domain, indicating that spatial perception and imagery share the same neural substrata. Here we describe a patient with a persistent disorder in visual imagery for familiar piazzas in the absence of any neglect for stimuli located in a far or near space or on his own body. Contrary to previous cases involving imagery disorders, computerized tomography scans showed a lesion confined to the right frontal lobe, suggesting the role of the frontal lobe in some specific types of mental imagery.