The present cohort study investigated whether systematic multisensory audio-visual stimulation might improve clinical signs of neglect. To this aim, patients with neglect (n = 7) and patients with neglect associated with hemianopia (n = 12) were exposed to a course of audio-visual stimulation with spatially and temporally coincident audio-visual pairs of stimuli for 10 daily training sessions (4 h of training per day), over two weeks. Performance on neuropsychological tests assessing neglect was measured before training, immediately after the training and months after the training at a follow-up session. The results showed significant post-training improvements in clinical signs of neglect, which were stable at the follow-up. These findings suggest that intensive and prolonged multisensory audio-visual stimulation affects orientation towards the neglected hemifield, therefore inducing long-term improvements in visual exploration and neglect symptoms in both patients with neglect and patients with neglect associated with hemianopia. Previous evidence from hemianopic patients suggests that these post-training effects might be mediated by activity in spared subcortical structures, such as the superior colliculus, which are relevant to multisensory integrative processing and spatial orientation.

中文翻译：

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多感官刺激后忽视的行为和功能变化

目前的队列研究调查了系统的多感官视听刺激是否可以改善忽视的临床症状。为此，忽视患者 (n = 7) 和忽视与偏盲相关的患者 (n = 12) 每天接受 10 次培训课程，其中包括空间和时间同步的视听刺激对（每天训练 4 小时），超过两周。评估忽视的神经心理学测试的表现在训练前、训练后立即和训练后数月的后续课程中进行测量。结果显示，忽视的临床症状在训练后得到显着改善，在随访中保持稳定。这些研究结果表明，密集和长时间的多感官视听刺激会影响对被忽视的半视场的定向，因此导致忽视患者和与偏盲相关的忽视患者的视觉探索和忽视症状的长期改善。先前来自偏瘫患者的证据表明，这些训练后的影响可能是由皮层下结构的活动介导的，例如上丘，这些结构与多感觉综合处理和空间定向有关。