Proposal of a method for evaluating the severity of Object centered neglect according to environmental complexity.

Abstract

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) occurs as a sequela of stroke. Especially, Object centered neglect (OCN) ignores the half side of the object bordering the midline of the object. Conventional assessment methods are considered to be cognitively burdensome to patients due to the large number of attention-obstructing objects. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the severity of OCN spatially according to the environmental complexity. Symptoms of OCN are characterized by ignoring the missing range of the missing sphere. Using this feature, we developed a system that can present a missing sphere in a VR-Space and evaluate symptoms by location according to whether or not the missing sphere is recognized. Furthermore, this system can adjust the environmental complexity and evaluate the severity of symptoms at each location. Using this system, we tested one patient with USN by changing the environmental complexity. The results suggest that OCN becomes more severe with increasing environmental complexity.