Multisensory stimulation for the rehabilitation of unilateral spatial neglect

ABSTRACT

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a neuropsychological syndrome, typically caused by lesions of the right hemisphere, whose features are the defective report of events occurring in the left (contralesional) side of space and the inability to orient and set up actions leftwards. Multisensory integration mechanisms, largely spared in USN patients, may temporally modulate spatial orienting. In this pilot study, the effects of an intensive audio-visual Multisensory Stimulation (MS) on USN were assessed, and compared with those of a treatment that ameliorates USN, Prismatic Adaptation (PA). Twenty USN stroke patients received a 2-week treatment (20 sessions, twice per day) of MS or PA. The effects of MS and PA were assessed by a set of neuropsychological clinical tests (target cancellation, line bisection, sentence reading, personal neglect, complex drawing) and the Catherine Bergego Scale for functional disability. Results showed that MS brought about an amelioration of USN deficits overall comparable to that induced by PA; personal neglect was improved only by MS, not by PA. The clinical gains of the MS treatment were not influenced by duration of disease and lesion volume, and they persisted up to one month post-treatment. In conclusion, MS represents a novel and promising rehabilitation procedure for USN.

KEYWORDS:

• Unilateral spatial neglect
• Multisensory
• Rehabilitation
• Prismatic adaptation

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Nicoletta Beschin for her valuable support in patients’ recruitment and testing, and Beatrice Minoli for her help in data collection. We are also grateful to Paolo Tampieri for the technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by a Grant Ministero della Salute (grant number GR-2016-02362497) from the Italian Ministry of Health to N.B., and by a Ricerca Corrente Grant from the IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano to G.V.