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

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

What is heminegligence? Going into detail

Hminegligence 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 the equivalent of the denomination of “unilateral negligence syndrome”, which is the neurological disorder to which the symptom corresponds.

As a symptom, heminegligence is the inability to consciously notice elements that come from one side with respect to the axis that crosses one’s body from the forehead to the back of the neck.

On the other hand, the unilateral negligence syndrome is the clinical picture of a person who apparently does not pay attention to anything located on one of his or her sides (or, more technically, one of his or her half-bodies), which means that he or she neither consciously perceives it nor performs actions located in that half of the half-body .

For example, a person with hemineglect will not be able to see a dog that is to the left of his field of vision, but neither will he be able to shave his beard completely: he will only shave half of his face.

On the other hand, if you ask a person who is negligent to draw a square as he is looking at it, he will only draw one half, but if he changes his position and looks at it from the opposite side, he will draw the half that was left out and not the other half.

The watch test for this syndrome

Thus, one of the typical tests used in clinics to find out if a person is heminegligent is to ask him to draw a clock . If you have this syndrome, you will only draw one half, and the other half will either not be drawn at all or will appear clearly “atrophied”.

Normally, the hemisphere that is “ignored” by people with heminegility is the left one , so the watch will be drawn in such a way that the hand cannot go beyond 6 or 7.

Symptoms

Some of the typical symptoms of Spatial Neglect Syndrome are as follows:

  • Inability to detect events occurring in one of the halves of the visual field.
  • Problems with noticing faint sounds that are picked up mainly by the ear of the affected hemicycle.
  • Inability to draw one of the halves of a scene or figure.
  • Problems with dressing, shaving, or maintaining personal hygiene
  • Disorganization in the chains of actions they undertake.
  • Frequent disorientation , by not knowing how the sites have been reached, or not recognizing them.
  • Memory problems are common.

Causes of Unilateral Spatial Neglect

The most frequent causes of heminegligence are usually ischemic accidents that leave certain parts of the brain without blood circulation and kill the neurons in that area. Thus, cerebral infarction is usually in the medical history of this type of patient.

It’s an attention problem

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

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

In addition, if you present them with a picture of two people with a friend or relative on the left , they will say they don’t see anyone they know, but the parts of the brain that are activated by seeing something familiar will be activated, which will not happen when you present two pictures of unknown people.

Heminegligence makes the perception of information coming from the left (usually) masked, but that does not mean it does not exist in any degree of intensity. It is not a question of “blindness” to one half of the body.

Treatments

Usually, the disease that causes hemineglect is severe enough that this disorder never completely disappears , although it may improve a little over time, due to neuronal plasticity.

That is why the treatments used are palliative, related to learning methods to carry out a day to day as normal as possible. However, they will almost always need regular assistance.