Body Image of the Unilateral Spatial Neglect Patients with Self-portrait Drawing

The left side neglect tendency was examined by the ability to draw self-portraits in six unilateral spatial neglect (USN) patients with the patients' eyes open and closed.With the eyes open, all the six patients were able to draw their self-portraits.All of those self-portraits were their own visual images, in which clear defects were observed on the left side of the body.With their eyes closed, however, three of them managed to draw their self-portraits but the other three failed to do so.The self-portraits drawn by the three patients with eyes closed had more defective parts than those drawn with eyes open.These results indicate that USN patients have difficulty not only in memorizing the visual scene but also in recalling their body image.Furthermore, it is also interesting to observe the left-right inversion in the self-portrait drawing.