Eye movements tell only half the story

Abstract

The dramatic improvements of neglect symptoms after prism adaptation (PA) have been interpreted as evidence that PA reorganizes higher levels of spatial representation. Here the authors demonstrate that while the exploratory eye movements of a patient with neglect were clearly shifted toward the left after PA, he still showed no awareness for the left side of the stimuli he was now actively exploring. PA modulates functions of the parietal lobe, such as eye movement control, but fails to influence the underlying mechanisms of neglect.