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C.B.'s MRI scans, 2 weeks after the stroke. An axial T2 image (top) and a coronal MPGR (multi-planar gradient echo) image (bottom) are shown. The lesion extended along the head, body, and tail of the caudate nucleus (see axial image) and into the putamen and globus pallidus (see coronal image), sparing the cortex. The patient's right side is on the left side of the image.
Source publication
The authors report the case of a woman with a right basal ganglia lesion and severe mental-rotation impairments. She had no difficulty recognizing rotated objects and had intact left-right orientation in egocentric space but was unable to map the left and right sides of external objects to her egocentric reference frame. This study indicates that t...
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In social situations, we encounter information transferred in firsthand (egocentric) and secondhand (allocentric) communication contexts. However, the mechanism by which an individual distinguishes whether a past interaction occurred in an egocentric versus allocentric situation is poorly understood. This study examined the neural bases for encodin...
Citations
... Each type of model has implications for the kinds of transformations involved, with the former requiring that novel views of objects be recognized by transforming the input image to the stored canonical representation and the latter by transformation to the nearest stored view. One popular mechanism that has been proposed to underly the transformation is mental rotation-that is, a rigid analog transformation through the intervening angles between the depicted view and the stored representation (Jolicoeur, 1985(Jolicoeur, , 1990Tarr, 1995;Tarr & Bülthoff, 1995)although, more recent evidence argues against such mechanism being required for object recognition (Gauthier et al., 2002;Harris et al., 2002;Hayward et al., 2006). Alternative mechanisms include interpolation between previously stored views (Bülthoff & Edelman, 1992;Edelman, 1999) or the alignment of key features in the image with those of stored representations (Ullman, 1989). ...
Is object orientation an inherent aspect of the shape of the object or is it represented separately and bound to the object shape in a similar way to other features, such as colour? This review brings together findings from neuropsychological studies of patients with agnosia for object orientation and experimental studies of object perception in healthy individuals that provide converging evidence of separate processing of object identity and orientation. Individuals with agnosia for object orientation, which typically results from damage to the right parietal lobe, can recognize objects presented in a range of orientations yet are unable to interpret or discriminate the objects’ orientation. Healthy individuals tested with briefly presented objects demonstrate a similar dissociation: object identity is extracted rapidly in an orientation-invariant way, whereas processing the object’s orientation is slower, requires attention and is influenced by the degree of departure from the canonical orientation. This asymmetry in processing can sometimes lead to incorrect bindings between the identity and orientation of objects presented in close temporal proximity. Overall, the available evidence indicates that object recognition is achieved in a largely orientation-invariant manner and that interpreting the object’s orientation requires an additional step of mapping this orientation-invariant representation to a spatial reference frame.
... Damage of striata impairs performance of striata with respect to spatial cues [22]. According to Harris et al., BG bleed patients have problems of mental rotation of the objects into spatial framework thereby leading to problem of perceptual disorders such as unilateral neglect [23]. Coughlan 1979 explained that with regard to lesion laterality, right BG bleed patients have poorer performance in visuospatial domain whereas left BG bleed patients have more problem in language domain [24]. ...
Basal ganglia accounts to most common site of hemorrhagic stroke (50%). Right hemisphere lesions that are restricted to basal ganglia are responsible for perceptual disorders such as unilateral neglect. Unilateral Neglect is a very common perceptual disorder that occurs after stroke. Unilateral neglect when compared to the stroke severity results in poor overall recovery. It may involve longer hospitalization period, functional dependency, long term disability in ADLs as well as increased risk of falls. Postural imbalance is more prevalent with right hemisphere lesions. Stroke survivors with right hemisphere damage have less ability to ambulate. As the stroke patient's balance is impaired and can lead to serious consequences like falls. So, if we know the questions related to balance and gait in stroke patients then it would be very important for us to understand these two physical capabilities among the hemiparetic subjects. It is therefore believed that it will lead to a better direction regarding the rehabilitation of these stroke patients. The case report presented here describes the clinical presentation of a right basal ganglia bleed patient who had unilateral neglect.
... Visual perspective taking through mental rotation, which is the ability to mentally rotate imagined objects in two-or three-dimension without the actual objects or their rotation, helps to solve the discrepancy (Zacks, 2008). Empirical studies suggest that we judge the right or left in the allocentric frame (e.g., the facing person's hands) based on mental rotation of our own perspective in the egocentric frame to the allocentric frame (Harris et al., 2002;Auer et al., 2008). Factor 2 was thus interpreted as the mental rotation factor. ...
Errors in discriminating right from left, termed right-left confusion, reflect a failure in translating visuospatial perceptions into verbal representation of right or left (i.e., visuo-verbal process). There may also be verbo-visual process, where verbal cues are translated into visual representations of space. To quantify these two processes underlying right-left confusion, Study 1 investigated the factor structure of the Right-Left Confusability Scale, which assesses daily experiences of right-left confusion. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that these two processes and another factor reflecting mental rotation underlie right-left confusion. Study 2 examined correlations between the (sub)scale scores and performance on orientation judgment tasks reflecting visuo-verbal and verbo-visual processes. Overall, self-reported measures were not associated with the behavioral performances presumably reflecting the two processes. These results suggest that the cognitive mechanisms underlying right-left confusion can be classified into visuo-verbal and verbo-visual processes and mental rotation, although their psychometric and behavioral indices might be distinct. Further studies may develop better assessments of right-left confusion reflecting these processes.
... Parietal cortex, but also basal ganglia (especially caudate nucleus) were activated during mental rotation task in a PET imaging study [33]. Deficits in mental rotation have been also described after damage to right basal ganglia [34]. A recent study using continuous Theta Burst Stimulation to downregulate the cerebellar hemisphere activity found increased reaction times in versions of Mental Rotation task, when the procedure was performed on left cerebellar hemisphere [35]. ...
Objectives:
Bipolar disorder (BD) significantly affects level of cognitive and motor functioning. Studies on cognitive function in BD shows i.a. deficits in visuospatial processing and visuospatial memory. However, studies have not used Mental Rotation Task to evaluate these functions so far. Our aim is to introduce this method to assess abovementioned deficits in euthymic BD patients.
Methods:
31 euthymic BD patients and 27 healthy volunteers matched for age and years of education were recruited. All participants performed digital version of Mental Rotation Task. In this task, participants were asked to compare two figures rotated against each other and declare its similarity or difference indicating whether the figures are identical or whether they constitute their own mirror image.
Results:
The test revealed significantly longer reaction times in the group of BD patients when images were rotated by - 90, - 45, 45, 90 degrees, or not rotated at all. There was no significant difference in condition of - 135, 135 or 180 degrees. The accuracy rate was significantly lower in the patient group than in the control group for the entire test and in each condition. The correlation between the average response time and the accuracy rate turned out to be insignificant.
Conclusions:
Our results are consistent with studies presenting visuospatial deficits in bipolar disorder. In this study we show for the first time that mental rotation deficits are present in euthymic state of BD patients.
... Other studies have related LRO to more spatial functions, primarily mediated by the right hemisphere. That is, spatial information is especially important in left-right decisions when mental rotation of the object is required (Ditunno & Mann, 1990;Harris, Harris, & Caine, 2002;Ratcliff, 1979). Mental rotation requires the ability to mentally manipulate (turn, twist or rotate) an image in order to match it to another image (Shepard & Metzler, 1971). ...
... Results showed that patients with left parietal lesions made more errors than patients with right parietal lesions when the stimuli where presented in a first person perspective whereas this was the other way around if the stimuli had to be mentally rotated. In line with these results, Harris and colleagues (Harris et al., 2002) presented a case study in which the right basal ganglia lesion resulted in LRO problems when the stimuli were presented in an allocentric reference frame (third person perspective), but not when presented in an egocentric reference frame (first person perspective). Thus, LRO for stimuli that need mental rotation seems to involve visuospatial abilities mediated by the right hemisphere. ...
... If implicit motor imagery is applied, the rotational process takes place from an egocentric (relative to parts of the own body) or first person perspective. Mental rotation is a flexible and strategic process (Harris et al., 2002) and subjects are able to voluntarily adopt a strategy for task solving (Kosslyn et al., 2001). They show adapted strategies following explicit task instruction (Tomasino & Rumiati, 2004), previous experience with the task (Moreau, 2012) or biomechanical difficulty of posture (ter Horst et al., 2010;Zapparoli et al., 2014). ...
... In a similar way, the anterior putamen was involved during the initiation of unskilled difficult movements that require high levels of cognitive control (Aramaki, et al., 2011;Okuma & Yanagisawa, 2008) whereas the posterior putamen seems to be involved in the automatic processing of well-learned automated hand movements (Bapi et al., 2006;Miyachi et al., 1997). Moreover, our results support the finding of Harris and coworkers (2002) who postulated that the striatum is an important integrative interface between visuospatial and motor components of the mental rotation process that allows smooth and accurate rotation (Harris et al., 2002). Beside subcortical changes, we also observed increases in the frontoparietal motor imaging network after successful training. ...
Functional imaging studies on mental rotation of hands have consistently pointed to the importance of the motor network implying the use of motor simulations for task solving. There is some evidence that the putamen may be a critical modulator of processing egocentric spatial orientation in mental rotation of hands and implicit motor imagery strategies have been described involving hand motor areas. This recruitment of resources processing representations of the own body is used in therapeutic mental rotation training. However, studies are lacking that investigate training-induced changes on the neuronal level. We used functional MRI to study the effects of long-term training on the neuro-functional correlates of mental rotation of hands in healthy volunteers and compared the training group to a passive control group. From pre- to post training, we found a transition of activation from the anterior putamen in unskilled performance to the posterior putamen in skilled performance. We also found an increase in activation in motor cortices and the supramarginal gyrus after learning. By contrast, members of the control group showed no improvements in performance and no pre/pos_t_-test differences in cortical activity. In conclusion, these findings suggest that increased neural efficiency after training in mental rotation of hands manifests as a decrease in visual imagery in conjunction with increased recruitment of motor-related regions. This is consistent with the obtained behavioral effects depicting motor imagery mediating expertise in mental rotation of hands.
... Brain lesion, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation studies indicate that the parietal lobes play an important function in tasks involving mental rotation and visual search (Blankenburg et al., 2010;Donner, Kettermann, Diesch, Villringer, & Brandt, 2003;Harris et al., 2000). Consistent with the links between "where" information is and motor planning, functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of mental rotation demonstrate activations of the primary motor and premotor cortices (Evans & Rothbart, 2007;Rubin et al., 2013), and the subcortical motor system involving the basal ganglia (Harris, Harris, & Caine, 2002). These foregoing findings support a role for the dorsal visual pathway, motor cortex and basal ganglia in visuospatial functions, and are regions also implicated in the neuropathology of HD. ...
... To date, there is very limited evidence linking specific brain measures with visuospatial performance in HD. However, our findings of associations between occipito-parietal and striatal volumetrics and visuospatial processing in HD, are consistent with evidence of dorsal visual stream involvement in visuospatial processing in healthy participants (Donner et al., 2003;Harris et al., 2000Harris et al., , 2002. Dorsal visual stream deficits relating to mental rotation have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (Jacobs et al., 2012;Mandal et al., 2012;Prvulovic et al., 2002). ...
Objectives:
Visuospatial processing deficits have been reported in Huntington's disease (HD). To date, no study has examined associations between visuospatial cognition and posterior brain findings in HD.
Methods:
We compared 119 premanifest (55> and 64<10.8 years to expected disease onset) and 104 early symptomatic (59 stage-1 and 45 stage-2) gene carriers, with 110 controls on visual search and mental rotation performance at baseline and 12 months. In the disease groups, we also examined associations between task performance and disease severity, functional capacity and structural brain measures.
Results:
Cross-sectionally, there were strong differences between all disease groups and controls on visual search, and between diagnosed groups and controls on mental rotation accuracy. Only the premanifest participants close to onset took longer than controls to respond correctly to mental rotation. Visual search negatively correlated with disease burden and motor symptoms in diagnosed individuals, and positively correlated with functional capacity. Mental rotation ("same") was negatively correlated with motor symptoms in stage-2 individuals, and positively correlated with functional capacity. Visual search and mental rotation were associated with parieto-occipital (pre-/cuneus, calcarine, lingual) and temporal (posterior fusiform) volume and cortical thickness. Longitudinally, visual search deteriorated over 12 months in stage-2 individuals, with no evidence of declines in mental rotation.
Conclusions:
Our findings provide evidence linking early visuospatial deficits to functioning and posterior cortical dysfunction in HD. The findings are important since large research efforts have focused on fronto-striatal mediated cognitive changes, with little attention given to aspects of cognition outside of these areas. (JINS, 2016, 22, 1-14).
... In any case, the present study, due to the absence of left parietal lesions, does not allow us to definitively exclude a role of the left hemisphere in visuo-spatial body map. Interestingly, in our study, differently from that of Baas et al. (2011) which included two tests of mental rotation of stimuli (hands vs. mirrors), we used two experimental tasks which did not require a manipulation of mental images (i.e., patients were not required to transform/rotate the mental image), a type of mental images processing which can be damaged in the right-brain-damaged patients (Ditunno & Mann, 1990; Harris, Harris, & Caine, 2002; Palermo, Piccardi, Nori, Giusberti, & Guariglia, 2010 ) and is processed by networks involved in personal neglect (e.g., parietal lobe, see Harris et al., 2000; Pegna et al., 1997; Zacks, 2008 for studies supporting the involvement of parietal lobe in mental rotations). Although Baas et al. (2011) nicely showed that only errors in judging left hands were predictive of personal neglect, they found that patients with personal neglect performed worse than controls and patients without personal neglect in mental rotations tasks involving both left hands and left mirrors, weakening the idea that in personal neglect there is only a body representation deficit instead of a more general representational deficit also involving extrapersonal space. ...
There is still a matter of debate around the nature of personal neglect. Is it an attention disorder
or a body representation disorder? Here we investigate the presence of body representation
deficits (i.e., the visuo-spatial body map) in right and left brain-damaged patients and in
particular in those affected by personal neglect. 23 unilateral brain-damaged patients (5 leftbrain-
damaged and 18 right-brain-damaged patients) and 15 healthy controls took part in the
study. The visuo-spatial body map was assessed by means of the “Frontal body-evocation
subtest (FBE),” in which participants have to put tiles representing body parts on a small
wooden board where only the head is depicted as a reference point. In order to compare
performance on the FBE with performance on an inanimate object that had well-defined right
and left sides, participants also performed the “Car test.” Group statistical analysis shows that
the performance of patients with personal neglect is significantly worse than that of the
controls and patients without personal neglect in the FBE but not in the Car test. Single case
analyses of the five patients with pure personal neglect confirm the results of group analysis.
Our data supports the hypothesis that personal neglect is a pervasive body representation
disorder.
... They may allow us to use a body scheme during LRD and MR. This idea is in line with a study of Harris et al. (2002), who found a comparable influence of horizontal and vertical positions of manikin-like stimuli in a group of healthy controls. Due to human-like attributions to the stimuli, the BRLD stickmen items may have led the study participants to use egocentric spatial operations. ...
Several authors pointed out that left-right discrimination (LRD) tasks may be entangled with differential demands on mental rotation (MR). However, studies considering this interrelationship are rare. To differentially assess LRD of stimuli with varying additional demands on MR, we constructed and evaluated an extended version of the Bergen right-left discrimination (BRLD) test including additional subtests with inverted stickmen stimuli in 174 healthy participants (50♂, 124♀) and measured subjective reports on participants' strategies to accomplish the task. Moreover, we analyzed practice effects and reliable change indices (RCIs) on BRLD performance, as well as gender differences. Performance significantly differed between subtests with high and low demands on MR with best scores on subtests with low demands on MR. Participants' subjective strategies corroborate these results: MR was most frequently reported for subtests with highest MR demands (and lowest test performance). Pronounced practice effects were observed for all subtests. Sex differences were not observed. We conclude that our extended version of the BRLD allows for the differentiation between LRD with high and low demands on MR abilities. The type of stimulus materials is likely to be critical for the differential assessment of MR and LRD. Moreover, RCIs provide a basis for the clinical application of the BRLD.
... Since subjects performed similarly across conditions and an equal number of items (6) were presented throughout, this suggests disparate hippocampal activity in the absence of memory load differences. Furthermore, subcortical activation in the basal ganglia has been reported in studies focusing on parity judgments in delayed mental rotation tasks (Alivisatos and Petrides, 1997; Harris et al., 2002; Crucian et al., 2003). A recent study combining fMRI and DTI by Umarova et al. (2010) identified a functional network of regions corresponding to visuospatial attention consisting of BA 44, the insula cortex, the putamen, and the medial frontal gyri. ...
Content-specific sub-systems of visual working memory (VWM) have been explored in many neuroimaging studies with inconsistent findings and procedures across experiments. The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a change detection task using a high number of trials and matched stimulus displays across object and location change (what vs. where) conditions. Furthermore, individual task periods were studied independently across conditions to identify differences corresponding to each task period. Importantly, this combination of task controls has not previously been described in the fMRI literature. Composite results revealed differential frontoparietal activation during each task period. A separation of object and location conditions yielded a distributed system of dorsal and ventral streams during the encoding of information corresponding to bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and lingual gyrus activation, respectively. Differential activity was also shown during the maintenance of information in middle frontal structures bilaterally for objects and the right IPL and left insula for locations. Together, these results reflect a domain-specific dissociation spanning several cortices and task periods. Furthermore, differential activations suggest a general caudal-rostral separation corresponding to object and location memory, respectively.
