Publications

Past studies aiming to test the effectiveness of rehabilitation techniques for hemispatial neglect have been often criticized for a number of methodological limitations, from non-random assignment to the groups, to absence of blind scoring (Cicerone et al., 2000; Cappa et al., 2005; Bowen and Lincoln, 2007; Paci et al., 2010; Teasell et al., 2011). While it seems that these shortcomings are being addressed by more recent studies, we here maintain that a major methodological improvement in studies of neglect rehabilitation might derive from the adoption of computer-based assessment, which has several advantages over the commonly used bed-side clinical or paper-and-pencil (PnP) tests. These more sensitive measures of neglect may provide a more accurate assessment of the effect of rehabilitation procedures, which may be missed with the currently employed classical measures of neglect, and may provide an indication for rehabilitation in patients who are currently not treated because of their normal performance on PnP tests.