Motor imagery in patients with a right hemisphere stroke and unilateral neglect

Introduction: In the last decade new treatments based on mental imagery have been developed for patients with stroke. Whether this therapy works for patients with neglect is currently unclear. Objective: To investigate whether patients with a right hemisphere stoke complicated with unilateral neglect were less capable of performing motor imagery as compared to patients with a right hemisphere stroke without unilateral neglect. Methods: In a patient-control study, 20 patients with a right hemisphere stroke were included. Twelve patients were diagnosed on admission with neglect and eight without neglect. The ability to perform motor imagery was tested using mental rotation tasks, based on either a visual (CMIA 'Hand Rotation' test) or a verbal (Questionnaire d'Imagerie Mentale: Rotation des Mains) instruction. In both tasks subjects were instructed to generate a mental image of their hand. Results: Patients with neglect scored significantly less (p = 0.02) as compared to patients without neglect on the visual mental rotation task, but not on the mental rotation task with verbal instruction. Conclusion: Patients with a right-hemisphere stroke and neglect seem less capable of performing visual mental rotation tasks in comparison to patients with a stroke without neglect.