Abstract：Objective: To explore the occurrence and clinical characters, location in image, and mechanism of hemispatial neglect(HSN), HSN test and SPECT rCBF imaging were performed on patients with stroke. Methods: Thirty-four dextromanual patients who were diagnosed as unilateral stroke clinically were recruited. A HSN test including line bisection test, star cancellation test and drawing test was performed on the subjects. The severity of neglect and rCBF, the range, number of the foci, the flow deficit size and the total numbers of pixels in the foci were measured on HSN test and SPECT rCBF imaging. Results: Thirty patients were diagnosed as HSN by the HSN test battery. Contralateral neglect(CN) and ipsilateral neglect(IN) happened on both the right and left hemispheres. On SPECT imagings, the patients with neglect had decreased rCBF in the frontal cortex mostly, parietal, occipital, temporal cortex secondly, and basal ganglia and thalamus the last. The patients who had two or more regions damaged showed neglect more easily and severe. The most significant region was temporal-parietal-occipital junction. The correlation coefficients between rCBF, the decreased percentage of rCBF and the severity of neglect were -0.175(P>0.05) and 0.266(P>0.05). The correlation coefficients between the range, number of foci, the flow deficit size, the total number of pixels of the foci and the severity of neglect were 0.543(P<0.01), 0.462(P<0.05), 0.429(P<0.05), 0.437(P<0.05), respectively. No difference reached significant between CN and IN on SPECT imaging. Conclusions: The severity of neglect correlates insignificantly with rCBF and the decrease percentage of rCBF, while it correlates positively with the range, number of foci, the flow deficit size and the total numbers of pixels of the foci. And CN and IN showed no difference on the occurrence, severity of neglect and the rCBF, the decreased percentage of rCBF, the range, and number of foci, the flow deficit size and the total numbers of pixels in the foci. We suggest that HSN is the damage of multiple sites, combine damage of which results in more severe neglect.
2008, Vol. 19 
