Simulating hemispatial neglect with virtual reality

A significant part of the strokes can result in hemispatial neglect. It is an attention disorder that leads to a loss of perception of the stimuli coming from the space contra-lateral to the brain lesion. The neglect occurs mainly for visual stimuli but other senses can also be affected. The rehabilitation of these patients is quite difficult as they usually suffer from anosognosia. Unfortunately, the opportunities to do experiments with a significant number of patients are rare. We propose to simulate the hemispatial neglect by using the virtual reality technology. Simulating this disorder not only allow us to determine the potential of a particular rehabilitation technique but can also help the rehabilitation staff and the relatives to get a better understanding of the patient's condition. We discuss the development of a simulated neglect in our system and compare the performance of healthy subjects, patients and simulated patients in a virtual replica of the line bisection test. The results suggest that our vision of the neglect is mostly accurate and that it could be a great tool to study new rehabilitation techniques.