Hemineglect: causes, symptoms and treatment

Hemineglect, or unilateral spatial neglect, is a neurological disorder that is expressed in a very strange way in patients who suffer from it. Specifically, it makes the person, apparently maintaining a normal degree of consciousness, unable to recognize stimuli that come from one side of their body.

In this article you can see the symptoms associated with hemineglect, its possible causes and the treatments related to the appropriate medical intervention for this type of patient.

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What is hemineglect? Going into detail

Hemineglect can refer to two similar phenomena. On the one hand, can be used to refer to a symptom, and on the other hand it is also possible to use it as equivalent to the denomination of "unilateral neglect syndrome", which is the neurological disorder to which the symptom corresponds.

As a symptom, hemineglect is the inability to consciously notice elements coming from one side with respect to the axis that crosses the body itself from the forehead to the nape of the neck.

On the other hand, unilateral neglect syndrome is the clinical picture of a person who apparently does not pay attention to anything that is located on one side of her (or, more technically, one of his hemibodies), which means that she doesn't even consciously perceive him nor does it perform actions located in that half of the hemibody.

For example, a person with hemineglect will not be able to notice a dog that is located to the left of his field of vision, but he will not be able to shave his beard completely either: he will only shave half his face.

On the other hand, if a person is negligently asked to draw a square as she sees it, she will only draw one half, but if you change its position and start looking at it from the opposite side to the previous one, it will draw the half that had been omitted and not the other.

The clock test to detect this syndrome

Thus, one of the typical tests used in clinics to find out if a person has hemineglect consists of asking him to draw a clock. If you have this syndrome, you will only draw one of the halves, and the other half will either not be drawn or will look clearly "stunted".

Usually, the hemibody that is "ignored" by people with neglect is the left, so the clock will be drawn in such a way that the hand cannot go past 6 or 7 o'clock.

Symptoms

Some of the typical symptoms of spatial neglect syndrome are the following:

• Inability to detect events that occur in one of the halves of the visual field.
• Problems noticing slight sounds that are picked up mainly by the ear of the side of the body that is affected.
• Inability to draw one of the halves of a scene or figure.
• Trouble dressing, shaving, or maintaining personal hygiene.
• Disorganization in the chains of actions they undertake.
• frequent disorientation, not knowing how the sites were reached, or not recognizing them.
• Memory problems are common.

Causes of Unilateral Spatial Neglect

The most frequent causes of hemineglect are usually ischemic accidents that leave certain parts of the brain without blood circulation and kill the neurons in that area. So that, cerebral infarction is usually in the medical history of these types of patients.

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It's an attention problem

Although hemineglect seems to be a problem that leaves one half of the body (and the field visual) the truth is that fundamentally it is a problem of attention that affects the information that comes from one of the hemibodies. This is known because, at an unconscious level, it has been seen that people with this neurological condition they do react to stimuli captured only from the affected side.

For example, if they are shown a drawing of a house whose left side is on fire, they will claim to see a normal house. However, if right after they are asked to select certain words, they tend to choose those related to the semantic field of fire and fires.

Furthermore, if they are presented a photograph of two people with a friend or family member on the left, they will say they do not see anyone they know, but the parts of the brain that are activated when seeing something familiar will be activated, something that will not happen when presenting two photographs of unknown people.

Hemi-neglect causes the perception of information coming from the left (normally) to be masked, but that does not mean that it does not exist to any degree of intensity. It is not about "blindness" to one half of the body.

• Related article: "Top 11 Attention Disorders (and Associated Symptoms)"

Treatments

Normally, the illness that produces hemineglect is severe enough that this mess never quite goes away, although it may improve a little over time, because of the Neuronal plasticity.

For this reason, the treatments used are palliative, related to learning methods to lead a day to day life as normal as possible. Of course, they will almost always need regular assistance.