Rehabilitation of unilateral left neglect: effectiveness of different treatments
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: REHABILITATION OF UNILATERAL LEFT NEGLECT: EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT TREATMENTS Cognitive rehabilitation is a systematically applied set of therapeutic interventions designed to improve cognitive functioning and daily living activities that may be affected by difficulties in one or more cognitive domains. Evidence-based cognitive rehabilitation treatments include strategy training for cognitive deficits and interventions for functional neuropsychological rehabilitation. Unilateral left neglect is defined as the right-brain-damaged patients’ failure to explore, respond, or orient to stimuli in the contralesional side of the space (Heilman et al., 1979). Neglect cannot be considered a unitary neuropsychological deficit, but a complex syndrome involving different functions and different space domains (personal, peripersonal, extrapersonal, and representational). Several rehabilitation approaches have been employed to treat neglect, many of them with positive and long-lasting effects (e.g., see Luauté et al., 2006). Nevertheless, some authors have recently reported no effects or only minor effects of neglect rehabilitation therapy (e.g., Cubelli et al., 1999; Rousseaux et al., 2006). Although there is substantial evidence to support cognitive rehabilitation for people who suffer from brain lesions, additional research is needed to answer the question of whether and why cognitive rehabilitation is really effective, examining the treatment factors and the patient’s characteristics to optimize clinical outcomes (Cicerone et al., 2005). The aim of the present study was to directly compare, for the first time, three neglect rehabilitation treatments already described in the literature: the Limb Activation Treatment (LAT; Robertson et al., 2002), the Prism Adaptation (PA; Rossetti et al., 1998), and the Visual Scanning (VS; Antonucci et al., 1995). In addition, the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of spontaneous recovery, in the sense of a change (improving or worsening) in the cognitive status without a specific neuropsychological intervention. For this purpose, 21 patients with unilateral right-sided lesion and left unilateral neglect were tested. Patients were treated with LAT, PA, or VS. The results showed no significant differencies among the three groups. The role of spontaneous functional reorganization and this role on effects of cognitive rehabilitation is critically discussed, considering the present data and those previously reported in the literature.
Author: Marco Pitteri
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W104203044