Neuropsychological Assessment of Patients with Right Hemisphere Damage

Abstract

  Patients with right hemisphere damage may show impaired awareness of the contralateral space and/or body. This impaired awareness includes several symptoms, and it is not uncommon that some symptoms appear at the same time after a stroke with a large lesion. By only observing behavior of daily life and rehabilitation, it might be difficult to fully understand what neuropsychological symptoms each patient shows. Therefore, this paper introduces the assessments for typical symptoms such as unilateral spatial neglect, personal neglect, anosognosia for hemiplegia/hemiparesis, hemiasomatognosia and somatoparaphrenia, as well as the lesion site involved in the appearance of each symptom. Based on each patientʼs brain damaged area, carrying out the above-mentioned assessments enables us to understand the severity and characteristics of the symptoms he or she shows as well as the presence or absence of each symptom. In addition, integration of the results from the assessments will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the impairment of awareness of the contralesional space and/or body in each patient.