Active Cue-Training in Neglect

The presented study investigates standardized visual cueing in reading and visual spatial task as a treatment method for spatial neglect. In a randomized controlled design patients receive either cued reading and visual spatial tasks (intervention) or treatment which is unspecific to neglect (control).

In the intervention condition, patients with left-sided neglect receive intense training, including reading and visual spatial task with standardized and adapted visual cueing by the therapist. Improvements in reading and visual spatial tasks lead to a reduction of cues by the therapist. Accordingly, the patient has to apply self-cueing over time in order to solve the task.

For the control condition, all patients receive unspecific treatment without any standardized adapted cueing implemented by the therapist.

To enhance the effectivity of cueing in reading and visual spatial tasks, the investigators additionally conduct parietal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in those patients without tDCS exclusion criteria (see exclusion criteria below).

It is hypothesised that systematic and adaptive therapeutic cueing leads to a significant reduction of omissions of word and word parts in reading.

UPDATE: No Add-on tDCS was performed since it was not applicable for our severly impaired patients due to the strict exclusion criteria of tDCS.