Dyschiria: Its present state and foreseeable developments

Abstract

“Unilateral neglect” is a collective term that refers to the defective symptoms of dyschiria, a disorder affecting sensori-driven as well as internally generated representational activity, confined to the side of space contralateral to a brain lesion (Bisiach & Berti, 1987; Zingerle, 1913). Dyschiria may also show through productive symptoms, such as somatoparaphrenia (Gerstmann, 1942), or the phenomena of allochiria (Obersteiner, 1882). The manifestation of dyschiria are manifold and double dissociations are well-known, even within sensory modalities. Double dissociations reveal the complexity of space representation and demand analytic investigation of its brain mechanisms; on the other hand, they may mislead and give rise to an exploded view of dyschiria, by which only the trees are seen, while the forest is lost to sight (see Vallar's warning, page 210). What is lost to sight is the (implicit) main predication of dyschiria, i.e. the topological correspondence between the represented world and the representing mechanism.