Biomedical subjects

Robert D McIntosh

Publications and source records attributed to Robert D McIntosh.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Automatic avoidance of obstacles is a dorsal stream function: evidence from optic ataxia.

When we reach out to pick something up, our arm is directed to the target by visuomotor networks in the cortical dorsal stream. However, our reach trajectories are influenced also by nontarget objects, which might be construed as potential obstacles. We tested two patients with bilateral dorsal-stream (parietal lesions, both of whom were impaired at pointing to visual stimuli (optic ataxia). We asked them to reach between two cylinders, which varied in location from trial to trial. We found that the patients' reaches remained invariant with changes in obstacle location. In a control task when they were asked to point midway between the two objects, however, their responses shifted in an orderly fashion. We conclude that the dorsal stream provides the visual guidance we automatically build into our movements to avoid potential obstacles, as well as that required to ensure arrival at the target.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

"Mind the gap": the size-distance dissociation in visual neglect is a cueing effect.

There is a growing body of evidence that the processes mediating the allocation of spatial attention within objects may be separable from those governing attentional distribution between objects. In the neglect literature, a related proposal has been made regarding the perception of (within-object) sizes and (between-object) distances. This proposal follows observations that, in size-matching and bisection tasks, neglect is more strongly expressed when patients are required to attend to the sizes of discrete objects than to the (unfilled) distances between objects. These findings are consistent with a partial dissociation between size and distance processing, but a simpler alternative must also be considered. Whilst a neglect patient may fail to explore the full extent of a solid stimulus, the estimation of an unfilled distance requires that both endpoints be inspected before the task can be attempted at all. The attentional cueing implicit in distance estimation tasks might thus account for their superior performance by neglect patients. We report two bisection studies that address this issue. The first confirmed, amongst patients with left visual neglect, a reliable reduction of rightward error for unfilled "gap" stimuli as compared with solid lines. The second study assessed the cause of this reduction, deconfounding the effects of stimulus type (lines vs. gaps) and attentional cueing, by applying an explicit cueing manipulation to line and gap bisection tasks. Under these matched cueing conditions, all patients performed similarly on line and gap bisection tasks, suggesting that the reduction of neglect typically observed for gap stimuli may be attributable entirely to cueing effects. We found no evidence that a spatial extent, once fully attended, is judged any differently according to whether it is filled or unfilled.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

A revised method for analysing neglect using the landmark task.

In order to better disentangle 'perceptual' and 'response' biases in neglect patients, Bisiach and his co-workers developed a new version of the 'landmark task'. In their version, subjects are required to choose which is the longer (first condition) or the shorter (second condition) of the two portions of a pre-bisected horizontal line. Two indices were proposed, for the purpose of measuring perceptual and response bias respectively. The perceptual bias index (PB) is the constant error across conditions, while the response bias index (RB) is the degree of response consistency between conditions. Although valuable in a clinical context, these indices are not mathematically independent of one another. Furthermore, they do not exploit all of the information available in a given set of landmark data, since the responses made at the different landmark locations are all averaged together. To overcome these problems, we propose two new indices that can be derived from the revised landmark task. Our perceptual bias index is the Point of Subjective Equality (PSE)--the mean landmark location that appears to be halfway along the line. The response bias index, M, is the mean probability of making a response that opposes the patient's subjective midpoint. PSE and M are mathematically independent of each other and use most of the landmark information. The method and its theoretical foundation are summarized, and illustrative data obtained from brain damaged patients and control subjects are presented. Finally, computational procedures are provided for both PSE and M.

Brain↗

PubMed2004

Reaching between obstacles in spatial neglect and visual extinction.

The aim of the present studies was to investigate whether 'perception' and 'visually guided action' could be dissociated with regard to two different aspects of the neglect syndrome. In the first study we tested a group of patients with neglect in two tasks, both within the same experimental setting. One task was to bisect a space between two objects, while the other required subjects to reach between the same pair of objects en route to a target area, so that the objects became potential obstacles to the reach. In the second study we tested a patient with visual extinction to double simultaneous stimulation, using a similar reaching task. Our aim was to determine whether visual awareness of obstacles in the workspace was necessary for successful navigation. In both studies we found evidence that reaching responses took normal account of the presence and location of obstacles on the left side, despite the tendency to neglect such left-sided information in more explicit perceptual tasks. We interpret both sets of results within a theoretical framework that identifies on-line visuomotor control with the occipito-parietal 'dorsal stream' (along with associated premotor and subcortical structures), and visual perception with the occipito-temporal 'ventral stream', plus associated temporo-parietal areas.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Ocular scanning and perceptual size distortion in hemispatial neglect: effects of prism adaptation and sequential stimulus presentation.

When asked to compare two lateralized shapes for horizontal size, neglect patients often indicate the left stimulus to be smaller. Gainotti and Tiacci (1971) hypothesized that this phenomenon might be related to a rightward bias in the patients' gaze. This study aimed to assess the relation between this size underestimation and oculomotor asymmetries. Eye movements were recorded while three neglect patients judged the horizontal extent of two rectangles. Two experimental manipulations were performed to increase the likelihood of symmetrical scanning of the stimulus display. The first manipulation entailed a sequential, rather than simultaneous presentation of the two rectangles. The second required adaptation to rightward displacing prisms, which is known to reduce many manifestations of neglect. All patients consistently underestimated the left rectangle, but the pattern of verbal responses and eye movements suggested different underlying causes. These include a distortion of space perception without ocular asymmetry, a failure to view the full leftward extent of the left stimulus, and a high-level response bias. Sequential presentation of the rectangles and prism adaptation reduced ocular asymmetries without affecting size underestimation. Overall, the results suggest that leftward size underestimation in neglect can arise for a number of different reasons. Incomplete leftward scanning may perhaps be sufficient to induce perceptual size distortion, but it is not a necessary prerequisite.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

PubMed2002

Prism adaptation improves chronic visual and haptic neglect: a single case study.

Visuomotor adaptation to rightward displacing optical prisms is known to induce temporary improvements in the symptoms of left visual neglect. We report a 74 year-old woman with severe and chronic neglect of nine months duration, who underwent three weekly sessions of prism adaptation. Substantial improvements were obtained on tests of visual neglect (cancellation, copying and bisection). Improvement was also observed on a spatial judgement task, with no explicit visual component, in which CS was required to locate the centre of a haptically explored circle. These observations confirm that brief periods of prism exposure can benefit even chronic neglect disorders. Moreover, the improvement observed on the haptic task supports the belief that this procedure can influence higher levels of spatial representation.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Visual and tactile length matching in spatial neglect.

Previous studies have shown that many patients with spatial neglect underestimate the horizontal extent of leftwardly located shapes (presented on screen or on paper) relative to rightwardly located shapes. This has been used to help explain their leftward biases in line bisection. In the present study we have tested patients with right hemisphere damage, either with or without neglect, on a comparable length matching task, but using 3-dimensional objects. The task was executed first visually without tactile contact, and second through touch without vision. In both sense modalities, we found that patients with neglect, but not those without, tended to underestimate leftward located objects relative to rightward located objects, differing significantly in this regard from healthy subjects. However these lateral biases were not as frequent or as pronounced as in previous studies using 2-D visual shapes. Despite the similar asymmetries in the two sense modalities, we found only a small correlation between them, and clear double dissociations were observed among our patients. We conclude that leftward length underestimation cannot be attributed to any one single cause. First it cannot be entirely due to impairments in the visual pathways, such as hemianopia and/or processing biases, since the disorder is also seen in the tactile modality. At the same time, however, length underestimation phenomena cannot be fully explained as a disruption of a supramodal central size processor, since they can occur in either vision or touch alone. Our data would fit best with a multiple-factor model in which some patients show leftward length underestimation for modality-specific reasons, while others do so due to a more high-level disruption of size judgements.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Grasping what is graspable: evidence from visual form agnosia.

Patient DF has profound visual form agnosia. Despite this, she has no problem adjusting her finger-thumb grip aperture to the width of objects when reaching to grasp them. In a previous study, however, she was found to have great difficulty in scaling her grip aperture when attempting to grasp a transparent disc through two holes cut into it. This problem was attributed to a putative difference between the visual processing of size and distance in the brain, whereby DF retained the capacity for processing object size but not the separation between distinct elements such as holes. In the present study we have tested this idea more directly, and found no evidence to support such a distinction. Nonetheless, we replicated our earlier finding that DF is unable to produce normal prehension movements when attempting to grasp transparent stimuli by placing her digits into holes. We suggest that, whilst some simple objects offer themselves directly to the dorsal stream for grasping, an intact ventral stream is required to respond appropriately to more complex stimuli.

Adult↗