Neglect assessment as an application of virtual reality

Objective - In this study a cancellation task in a virtual environment was applied to describe the pattern of search and the kinematics of hand movements in eight patients with right hemisphere stroke. Methods - Four of these patients had visual neglect and four had recovered clinically from initial symptoms of neglect. The performance of the patients was compared with that of a control group consisting of eight subjects with no history of neurological deficits. Results - Patients with neglect as well as patients clinically recovered from neglect showed aberrant search performance in the virtual reality (VR) task, such as mixed search pattern, repeated target pressures and deviating hand movements. The results indicate that in patients with a right hemispheric stroke, this VR application can provide an additional tool for assessment that can identify small variations otherwise not detectable with standard paper-and-pencil tests. Conclusion - VR technology seems to be well suited for the assessment of visually guided manual exploration in space.