Il giorno 4 giugno 2024 alle ore 10 il prof. Robert D. McIntosh (University of Edinburgh, UK) terrà il seminario dal titolo: "Beyond bisection: the diagnosis and characterisation of spatial neglect".

Ingresso libero

info: moreno.coco@uniroma1.it

ABSTRACT

Horizontal line bisection is a traditional task for the diagnosis of spatial neglect, and the study of
spatial attention in healthy participants. The participant is asked to mark the middle of a horizontal
line, and their deviation from the true midpoint is taken as the index of performance (bisection
error). The task is simple, and sensitive to spatial neglect, and yet it is surprisingly unclear what
underlying abilities this task measures. I have proposed an alternative analysis of the line bisection
task, which focuses not on bisection error but on the relative influence (weighting) of the left and
right endpoint positions in determining the response. This analysis suggests that what the task really
measures is the precision with which locations on the left and right side are represented. I will
present supporting evidence from brain-damaged and healthy participants, and from computational
modelling of their performance. I will argue that a fuller understanding of line bisection may allow
us to move beyond the traditional task, and replace it with something better designed to tap into the
core cognitive asymmetry of spatial neglect.
For a short (15 minute) primer on this approach, see this video: https://osf.io/3chd5